


Six Degrees of Separation

by Ermmmmmm



Category: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - Thorne & Rowling
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Fluff, Fluff galore, M/M, Not Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Compliant, Not Scorbus, Scorbus, that is the question
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-07
Updated: 2017-04-08
Packaged: 2018-09-15 10:03:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 9
Words: 56,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9229907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ermmmmmm/pseuds/Ermmmmmm
Summary: Albus, Scorpius Malfoy just isn't that into you. He's dating Rose Granger-Weasley - didn't you hear? Get over it.UPDATE - Author's note based on most recent update. Please take a look and let me know what you think! :) (This fic is not finished!)





	1. First Degree: Uncoupling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What a difference a summer holiday makes...

_"First degree - uncoupling: the conscious breaking up of the past relationship so that no remanent remain in the witch or wizard’s life"._

***

“She said yes, Albus. I’m telling you, Albus, she said yes to me. To me! She did! Rose did!”

 

“Yeah, she did”, Albus grimaced, not looking up from packing his trunk at the foot of his bed. He couldn’t bear it. 

 

“I knew I shouldn’t have given up on myself”, Scorpius chirped, pottering around the bed as picked up stray books and quills from the base of his four-poster. “It may have been out of pity, but she said yes”. 

 

“No denying that”, Albus’s gaze was fixed on his trunk, his thumb brushing the frayed leather of the lid more and more erratically as Scorpius went on. “I’m happy for you, mate”. 

 

“Good…,” Scorpius’s voice trailed off at the end, and Albus swallowed the frog in his throat, knowing that his thinly veiled facade had been rumbled. “Is that…is that true, Albus? Really? Because we’ll still be best friends, you don’t have to worry about that, I’ll always have time for you, Albus…”

 

“Aren’t you getting ahead of yourself a little?” Albus muttered, immediately putting his palm to his face when he realised his crassness.

 

“You’re saying not to expect anything to happen?”  Scorpius sniffed, the mood of the room dropping like a stone around Albus’s neck. “Thanks, mate”.

 

“That’s not…that’s not what I meant”, Albus pulled against the force of his distress and lifted his head to look at his best friend. “It’s just you haven’t even had one date yet and you’re already about a million miles ahead of yourself”.

 

“I’m just excited, Albus”, it was Scorpius’s turn to look away now, although more likely out of disdain for Albus’s remarks rather than the fact that he was just as hopelessly infatuated with the very being packing in front of him right that moment. “I left my toothpaste in the bathroom”, Scorpius mumbled to himself and ran to the bathroom to pick it up. 

 

Albus breathed, almost spluttering out the hurt that was building inside him. He put a hand to his head as the world began to spin and spin like an out-of-control Firebolt, and he put his other hand to the bed to sit down. Forget the bed; he needed a bucket. 

 

***

 

_20th August 2021_

_Malfoy Manor, Wiltshire_

 

_Dearest Albus,_

 

_I can’t believe it has been two weeks since we last wrote! I swear we never used to be this rusty! In any case, I have so so so so much to tell you! I’ll write some of it here and save some of it for the train ride up to Hogwarts, because my hand’ll start cramping if I write all of it here, and poor old Hesketh would have to carry my magnum opus to you if I told you it all now._

 

_So Rose and I are heading up to Hogsmeade before term starts, just to get some supplies and a feel for the place before all us students come and ransack the place. I’m quite looking forward to it for two reasons: a) I’m going with Rose Granger-Weasley, so why wouldn’t I find this amazingly exciting? and b) I’ll get to go to the second-hand bookshop we always go to when you and I go in when it’s completely empty, and that’ll be great fun. I can’t wait to show Rose it, it sounds exactly the sort of place that she’d just adore._

 

_I told you all about the Quidditch stuff in my last correspondence, so I shan’t bore you stiff with all the story again. But did you look at the pictures I sent you? That director’s box was amazing, I swear I could see the whole stadium from there. And we got to gorge on pumpkin vol-au-vents and limited-edition Bertie Bott’s flavours! And I got to meet the Chairman of the British Quidditch Association, and he was very charming indeed - a personal friend of your mother’s apparently, he told me to pass on his regards to her. So here, have some regards! Use them wisely!_

 

_One day, Rose’s mother (THE MINISTER FOR MAGIC I’M FLIPPING DYING ALBUS) took Rose and me into Diagon Alley last week for ice cream at Fabian Fortescue’s and a book spree at Flourish and Blotts - absolute heaven for a bookworm like me, Al. Literally. Omfg I still can’t get over I’ve met the Minister for Magic, Al. Oh good grief, this is quite an honour. I know she’s like your aunt and you probably think me a fool, but I didn’t wash my hand for about two hours!! And you know how much I hate germs! If she weren’t Rose’s mother, I think I’d have found my political crush; now it just seems a bit strange to think like that…_

 

_Tell me what you’ve been up to, Al! I feel so out of touch with you, and I’m really gutted that we didn’t get to meet up this summer like we’d planned! I can’t wait to hear from you!_

 

_Your dear friend,_

 

_Scorpius_

 

***

 

_27th August 2021_

_Godric's Hollow, Somerset_

 

_Hey Scorp,_

 

_Nice to hear you’ve been having a busy summer! Normally you always moan that you’ve had nothing round to do apart from help sweep the Manor and help your father pick out his autumn wardrobe, so this has to be an improvement._

 

_Well done on all of your endeavours with Rose - you deserve to be very happy indeed, my friend. And indeed, all of your anecdotes sound delightful, I’ll have to catch up with you properly when we're back on the train together._

 

_I’ve had a normal quiet summer at the Potter household. Rose actually came over a couple of times, I’m surprised you didn’t accompany her. I would have loved to see you, mate. If you’re nosing around Diagon Alley before the start of term, let me know, I’d like to meet up just us, just like old times._

 

_Give us a hoot if you can make it! If not, we’ll catch up on the train!_

 

_Forever yours,_

 

_Al_

 

***

 

Albus slammed his trunk at the foot of his childhood bed shut, locking the latches of the case with a frustrated flick. He couldn’t help it, but it was the fourth time he had replayed that particular scene in his mind that weekend, not to mention the rest of the Greatest Hits of Scorpius: the hugs, the jokes, the companionship. Whereas he would have gotten high on the pleasure and the security that his memories of his friendship with Scorpius would give him, now he felt claustrophobic, as if the walls of his own mind were closing in on him at breakneck speed. 

 

Biting his lip, he sighed and heaved himself onto the lid of the trunk, the lid aching slightly as he pushed himself down. He knew he shouldn’t be jealous, he knew he should be made up for Scorpius; his best mate in the whole world finally had landed a date with the girl he fancied after years of rejection. Albus knew he would be upset if Scorpius weren’t happy for him if the tables were turned; thing was, if the tables were turned, Scorpius wouldn’t just be happy for him - he’d be in Albus’s arms, nuzzling his long nose into the soft skin of Albus’s neck, his arms holding on gently to the slight tubbiness of Albus’s waist. Alas, he wasn’t.

 

It was on the Hogwarts Express on the way back from the end of their fourth year that Albus realised it - between York and Bradford if he remembered correctly. Replaying that scene in his head, Scorpius’s elation, his own jealousy and dismay, the cogs of realisation slowly ticked into place. He was in love with him. In that icky, not friendly, slightly sexual way. With tongues. Images of Scorpius and Rose kissing seared across his mind like lightning, a distinct burning sensation ripping its way through his veins as he shivered in pain on the tatty leather seat of the train compartment. His heart soared at the idea of replacing Rose’s bushy locks and rounded face with his own ragged hairdo and more masculine features. He bet that Scorpius was an attentive kisser, putting just enough aloof emotion into each peck and smack. Fuck he wanted to kiss Scorpius.

 

Of course, it took a while to sink in. Days spent missing easy saves as the Potter-Weasley Keeper flew by as the magnitude of such an admission weighed further and further on his mind. Was he gay? Bi? Pan? Did he just have a thing for blond Slytherin bookworms with no taste in puns but with impeccable facial features? The more he tried to think of anyone sexually, man or woman, it all came back to one name. Fuck sake. 

 

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fu-

 

“Albus, if you're not downstairs in the next three minutes, you’re flying the Anglia to Hogwarts”, his father’s voice bellowed up the stairs, bursting its way through the closed bedroom door and smacking against Albus’s eardrums like a baboon to its chest. Albus supposed he ought to get up. Fuck.

 

—-

 

The upholstery of the car carried the strong scent of faded leather trunks and owl faeces as it trundled through the backstreets of London, eventually coming to a halt about seven hundred yards from Kings Cross Station in a heap of traffic and people. Albus, still surrounded by his own insecurities that swirled around in his mind, clung onto the door handle of the back seat in a slightly desperate attempt to earth himself. Staring up at the gleaming white clock of St Pancras’ Station, he anchored himself to the big jet black hands; at least if he was asked what was wrong, he could legitimately say that he was worried they were going to miss the train.

 

 Maybe he could get over him quickly. Maybe he didn’t actually fancy Scorpius at all and he was just jealous that Rose would get more time to spend with her boyfriend than he would with his best friend now. He had to try, for the sake of their friendship, and his friendship with Rose for that matter. Albus sat up slightly in his attempt to get some perspective. He wasn’t a baby anymore; it was his responsibility to show that he was happy for Scorpius, that he would be there for him no matter what, just like he had done countless times in his life and particularly in the last year.

 

But again, Albus creased back into the fading grey upholstery of the Ford Capri at the thought of Scorpius and Rose sitting by the cedar tree in a secluded part of the lake, feeding each other some sort of fruit whilst debating the History of Hogwarts and going in for the occasional kiss or nuzzle. Albus felt a longing pang for the simpler times, when he and Scorpius would go down to the kitchens and eat all the leftover puddings, or when they’d cast a Muffiliato charm on one of their four-posters and they’d spend hours at night just chatting and joking and enjoying the simplicity of their best friend’s company. Albus especially enjoyed it when on occasion Scorpius would accidentally fall asleep on his bed and Albus could listen to the gentle rise and fall of his companion’s slumber escaping his perfect lips. Now, as the clouds of time and nostalgia cleared into the traffic haze of the black cabs ahead of them, he knew nothing would ever be the same again. 

 

—-

 

The train chugged slowly out of his parents’ sight and through the tunnel which would lead them to the open railway, pressing northwards to their Scottish home for the remainder of the year. First-years zipped excitedly up the corridors, almost knocking over the trolley witch with their curiosity and their newfound independence; seventh-years were a lot more mellow, two Hufflepuffs smoking cigarettes out of the window of the door up the corridor from Albus as they reminisced on shenanigans past. 

 

Albus was on his own, but he couldn’t quite tell if he was happy about it or not. There was, naturally, a large Scorpius shaped hole that could not be filled opposite him, with sweets surrounding them like a game of chocolate duck-duck-goose across the leather seats of the compartment. But it also meant he didn’t have to endure them two together. He had written a couple of letters to Scorpius over the summer, and got replies about how Rose and him had gone to Madam Puddifoot’s in Hogsmeade the weekend after term started and did some sort of cutesy doily airy fairy shite that didn’t suit Scorpius at all, and how they had gone to see a Quidditch international friendly between England and Bulgaria and how Rose had managed to secure the best seats with all her connections and that he couldn’t have imagined ever being able to do something like that with anyone other than his father. Albus’s replies had been decidedly shorter; he would spend about four hours lamenting that Scorpius had ever fallen for Rose in the first place and then realise he had nothing to say back to his friend when he felt so at odds with Scorpius’s world. It made him feel hollow. 

 

“There you are!”  _Merlin’s bastard arsehole!_  “We’ve been walking up and down this whole train trying to find you!”

 

Rose trundled her trunk and suitcases into the now tiny compartment, rolling them into the corner by the window and Albus’s feet. Then, those dreaded footsteps behind her; Albus had never been quite so confused by the potent mix of fear, adrenaline, and infatuation that coursed through his arteries than at that moment. Immaculate shoes betrayed the footsteps but the stack of suitcases on the trolley toppling over across the floor of the compartment more than betrayed the owner; Albus couldn’t help but stifle a grin.  _Maybe he’s not changed so much…_

 

“Hey, Rose”, Albus managed a small, curt smile, as though he was trying to hold in the most noxious wind without anyone noticing. “Nice to finally seen you, I’ve hardly seen you all summer!” Albus directed at Scorpius whilst still looking at Rose, immediately regretting his petulance. Finally, with sheer determination and grit, he looked into the face of his best friend; Scorpius had a sheepish look of guilt about him, almost as if he knew the torment he was causing Albus but couldn’t bring himself to admit it out loud.  _Of course, he doesn’t, he doesn’t even know how I feel…_

 

“I’ve missed you”, Scorpius edged forward past the pile of luggage he had created, pulling Albus into one of his hugs that was more like a crashing rockfall. But Albus loved it all the same. “I wish we had written more often, I feel like I hardly know what you’ve been up to since we left”.

 

“Not much, not much”, Albus mumbled, doing his best to maintain the tight-lipped grin that stopped him from wanting to be sick. “I hear you two had a nice summer?” 

 

“Yeah, it’s been nice”, Scorpius bit his lip as he took a seat dangerously close to Rose’s legs, swapping another sheepish look with Albus’s cousin before looking back. “We ended up seeing quite a bit of each other in the end, didn’t we?”

 

“Yeah, took me by surprise”, Rose rolled her eyes playfully in Albus’s direction. “We definitely enjoyed ourselves”. 

  
“I hear the Quidditch match was quite exciting?” Albus said, trying to make eye contact with them both but failing and looking up at a dink in the veneer of the furnishings instead. “You said you had really good seats”.

  
“Oh my god, yes”, Scorpius blurted. “There were these seats and they were the comfiest seats I think I’ve ever sat in, and they topped your drink up for free and they gave you free programmes, even though we’d already bought programmes before we got into the stadium, and there weren’t even that many people there so we got an amazing view and we got to speak to some of the players afterwards and there was music and food and the seats were so comfortable I think I could have fallen asleep and -“

 

“Yes, it was nice”, Rose smartly interrupted Scorpius before he exploded into excited rubble. “It was nice to spend the day up in Hogsmeade as well; it’s so quiet and strange without lots of Hogwarts students around”.

 

“And Madam Puddifoot’s Tea Rooms were so cute as well”, Scorpius chirped. “Those little dinky jam tarts with the tea in the nice china teacups, they were lovely”.

 

“Don’t forget the Victoria sponges”, Rose chimed in. “They were definitely the best”.

 

“No!”, Scorpius looked almost affronted by such a suggestion. “It was definitely those jam tarts, those strawberry ones”.

 

“Have you gone totally potty?” Ah, there was the old Rose lurking in the background. “Only a tongue-less imbecile could possibly come to that conclusion”. 

 

“What are you suggesting?” Scorpius’s eyes were wide, as though Rose was questioning a fundamental world truth. 

 

“That there is only one worthy winner in this battle and it has to be the Victoria Sponge, Scorp!”

 

 _Scorp_. Rose using his nickname for his best friend hit Albus squarely in the chest, and he wisely chose to start tuning out of their argument, feeling as though they wouldn’t notice if climbed out of the carriage by the window, did the most salacious tango with the driver and the trolley witch on the train’s roof, before jumping back into the carriage again totally naked. Albus couldn’t hear the words that they were using, but they attacked his already fragile eardrums nonetheless, spinning him round in a dizzying loneliness. He felt as though he were a lonely planet far away from Scorpius’s orbit, watching as Rose’s moon came closer and closer until the orbit was brushing the sides of Scorpius’s planet delicately, turning snugly as Albus drifted away into a cloud of dust. 

 

Lightning crackled in his ears, and Al blinked himself out of his open-eyed slumber. 

 

“Come on, Albus, what do you think?” Rose’s fuzzy head bobbed in front of him, clicking her fingers in his face. Albus took a glance outside and saw the setting sun disappear behind the horizon from the dirty carriage window.  _I must have fallen asleep without noticing_. 

 

“Strawberry jam tarts?” Albus offered weakly as he pushed himself in his seat, immediately earning a loud tut from his frizzy-haired cousin in response. 

 

“Keep up, Albus!” Rose clicked her fingers again. “We’re discussing whether the Decree for the Reasonable Restriction of Underage Sorcery should be repealed to allow underage wizardry outside of schools under strict adult supervision. Scorpius decided to support the motion, so naturally, I decided to counter him in order to balance the argument. What do you think about this issue, Albus?”

 

Albus huffed, wiping an absent hand over his brow in thinly veiled defeat. He really had no clue where to begin, but he did know that he and Scorpius would never have such highbrow conversation together when they were just enjoying each other’s company. Albus felt all at sea, looking into a mirage of his old friendship and watching it wash away with the sands of time. “I…I really…””

 

Albus’s gaze flicked rightwards as a frantic knock on the compartment door caught his attention. Lily, his younger sister, bobbed her head excitably above the wood panelling and drew the door back. “Hey guys, I was wondering where you guys got to!”, Lily winked at Scorpius and Rose, seemingly totally caught up in the romance of it all. “I’m sure Albus feels positively sick of you two already!”

 

“I’m doing just about alright, thanks, Lil’”, Albus murmured, even if he knew she was closer to the truth than even he was able to admit to himself. 

 

“Well, in any case, it’s time to change into our robes”, Lily grinned. “If you wanna come use our compartment to change, Rose, you’re welcome!”

 

“Thank you, Lily”, Rose dipped her head a little too formally. “I’ll be right along now”. With a peck on Scorpius’s cheek, she turned to leave the boy’s compartment with her smallest bag with her robes inside. 

 

Scorpius leant against the seat in a haze of infatuation, making Albus feel close to vomiting once more. “Isn’t she great, Albus? She’s just so intellectual, Al, you can have such amazing conversations with her. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so intellectually stimulated by someone my own age”.

 

 _Well, thanks a fucking bunch, Scorp._ “That’s nice, mate”, Albus decided to respond with something vaguely positive, remembering the strange atmosphere of the common room at the end of fourth year when he had dared to question the situation the last time. “It’s nice that you’re branching out a little. You deserve to be happy”.

 

“And you’re sure that you’re not put out by this?” Albus looked back into Scorpius’s shining eyes, one step away from retching on the spot but unable to look away again nonetheless. “I really like Rose, Al, but you’re my best mate for life. I’m always here for you, Al”.

 

“It’ll be okay, Scorp”, Albus shot a smile back, trying his damnedest not to show how distraught he felt inside. “I trust you”. Just as Albus was about to take off his Muggle jumper to put his robes on, he felt another crashing Scorpius hug take him off balance, and he let himself wallow in the intoxicating closeness that swam serenely up and down his body. Eventually, it had to come to an end, and Scorpius brought his arms away slowly before opening his own trunk to change into his robes. Albus felt cold and went to shut the window. The window had never been opened, he realised. 

 

—-

 

He couldn’t face it. He couldn’t face the people, the noise, the food. He was nauseous enough from the journey and having Scorpius and Rose unceremoniously rubbing their dating in Albus’s face from Kings Cross to Hogsmeade, and he really didn’t need to watch Scorpius pine next to him to across the other end of the Great Hall all evening. 

 

“I’m gonna go and fetch Rose and we can all walk into the Great Hall together”, Scorpius smiled as they jumped out of the Thestral-drawn carriages. “I won’t be a moment!” 

 

As soon as Scorpius was out of Albus’s view, he hung back around the end of the long line of students of all ages trudging through the mud that led to the castle doors. Albus breathed in and out through his nose, trying to work out if he was being totally rational or not as he timed his breaths with each crunch he took out of the gravelling path. Albus supposed he could possibly deal with the relationship if Scorpius didn’t insist on spending every moment of the day with his new beau, and, to Scorpius’s credit, he had promised Albus that he would be there for him, that he would always be his best friend. But there was always that niggle, that regret that Albus had never made a move first. Not that Scorpius was gay or bi or whatever, Albus shrugged to himself. He felt his eyes burn in pain and slight embarrassment that not only was he one of the most unpopular people at school, he was destined to forever be in unrequited love with the one person who could really stomach his presence there. Fucking great. 

 

Feeling totally justified with skiving off of the Great Feast, Albus slunk off towards the Slytherin dungeons as soon as he found that he could get away undetected. He ran towards the shadowy darkness that had become his base for the last four years, if not quite his home. The more Albus thought about it, the more he realised that he didn’t have a home. His parents’ house felt more like a camp for the disappointments than somewhere he found he was his home, and Hogwarts was a showcase for that disappointment for all to see. His home used to be Scorpius, wherever he could be found. But he couldn’t count on that anymore. He was alone, his own home. And he hated himself. 

 

His canter tumbling into a full-blown sprint towards the great portrait that guarded the Slytherin common room, he felt a great urgency to find the nearest pillow and hold it into the quickest sleep he could, to expunge himself of all trace of sadness and bitterness towards the boy he couldn’t and didn’t want to get over.

 

“Gillyweed!” Albus choked out when he had reached the portrait. “Please let me in!”

 

“I’m sorry, young fellow”, the knight in the portrait boomed from above him. “That was last year’s password. We’re very security conscious down here, you know! As a matter of fact, you should be down at the Great Feast, my dear boy! You’re missing out on a magnificent spread -“

 

“Please, please, sir!” Albus flashed a pleading gaze up at the portrait, and the knight shrank back slightly when Albus felt his eyes water without him even realising he was that upset. “I can’t be there, I really have no place there, I just want to go to bed and forget today ever happened”.

 

“I…” the knight looked away for a moment and sighed. “One supposes I can make an exception this once, dear boy. You take care, there”. The portrait swung open, and Albus launched himself and his things down the stairs into the common room. Leaving his things in the common room without a second thought, he ran back up the stairs, careful to enter the fifth year dorm instead of the fourth, at least safe in the knowledge that his bed would await him just the other side of the door.

 

He burst the door open with the force of his devastation, and immediately jumped towards his bed to the right, drawing the curtains around him and casting a Muffiliato charm around the room before letting his heavy head hit the pillow with the most colossal of thuds. This was it. For the foreseeable and far-off future. Scorpius was going to fall in love with Rose, grow old together, have children, have a life. Without Albus. Eventually, Scorpius would have to choose between one of them, and it would have to be Rose because she would be his wife, and Albus would just be a friend. Albus felt roasting as he laid with his tears forming puddles which seeped into the fresh linen of his pillowcases. He choked aloud, allowing himself to wallow in his self-hatred and loneliness as he heard the cheers and celebration of new Hogwarts blood ring soundly from the Great Hall beyond. Albus rolled over. Sleep did not claim him for its own. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This should be a seven-chaptered fic; I've already written about 75% of the whole thing, so regular updates should be a thing. I've not read Cursed Child but I have read enough on here to get the gist of what went on. This fic doesn't draw on much specific from that apart from Rose and Scorpius but doesn't go out of its way to be uncompliant. If there are discrepancies, I apologise now. Please leave comments if you'd like, I'd love to know what you guys think. Thanks for reading!


	2. Second Degree: Distance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The situation becomes more desperate. Albus wins back some unlikely allies.

_“Second degree - distance: the physical realisation of the first degree”_

 

***

 

“Al?” The soft, worrying, questioning tone of the voice carrying its way through the curtains licked Albus’s ears softly, lifting him from his rough night’s sleep. “Albus, it’s getting late”.

 

“Huh”, was all Albus could come up with in response, the four-poster bed still pitch black because of the black-out curtains.

 

“Albus, tell me what’s wrong”, came the almost whiny plea from the beyond. “Please, Al? You disappeared so quickly last night”.

 

“I’m just ill, Scorp”, Al almost barked back, but the effect was muffled by the pillow he was talking into. “I felt like I was gonna vom when we got through the castle doors, so instead of puking all over the feast, I thought it best to come back here and feel ill instead”. _Not entirely untrue…_

 

“O-okay”, Scorpius replied uncertainly. “Do you feel better now, though?”

 

 _Not particularly_ , thought Albus, but he couldn’t stay in the sanctuary of his bed forever - even he had to admit that. “A little”.

 

“Well, come down to breakfast with me if your stomach’s settled”, Scorpius offered, before adding in an enticing sing-song, “there will be bacon, and sausages, and egg…”

 

“Fine”. Albus’s curtains ruffled to show a very dishevelled and still dressed Albus to the rest of the common room, which thankfully just consisted of Scorpius. 

 

Scorpius visibly recoiled at the sight, making Albus feel even less attractive than before. “Sorry, Al…you just look…you look pretty rough”.

 

“Well there’s no time to shower now”, Albus mumbled, almost stomping towards the mirror in the corner to make a limp attempt at taming the jungle that was his jet-black Whomping Willow hairdo, but surrendered quickly when his curls practically swatted his hand away. “Let’s just go, Scorp”. 

 

Albus wasn’t sure if it was a squeak or an actual response that Scorpius had given, but his immediate thoughts of wanting to get breakfast over with as soon as possible lent him no room for contemplation. He still felt slightly sick. 

 

—-

 

“…and oh Merlin, Albus, it was such a scandal! Pansy Parkinson’s youngest getting into Hufflepuff! And you thought your family would give you grief for being sorted into Slytherin - she won’t be having Christmas for a while, I can assure you that, Al! And you missed on those lovely rhubarb cakes that you said you really liked, Al! They were so delicious…” Normally, Albus loved listening to Scorpius’s inane chatter about nothing in particular; it made Scorpius who he was, and he loved how he would just chatter out loud to Albus and Albus didn’t have to work too hard for conversation. It wasn’t that he didn’t enjoy talking back; he just sometimes preferred to take a back seat and listen to whatever was on Scorpius’s mind that day, the rough with the smooth. 

 

Today was a different day. Each word propelled in his direction hit him squarely between the eyes like tiny pins, all piercing exactly the same spot which was becoming more and more swollen. He felt his vision start to cloud even as Scorpius’s diatribe became more and more indistinct, and he had to hold onto the bannister of the grand marble staircase to stop himself from doing accidental cartwheels into the Atrium. He took each step with two feet, focusing on his laces to stop his head from spinning anymore, at least while he was in a life-and-death situation on the stairs. 

 

“…and then McGonagall finished telling her joke to the staff table and the response was flipping brutal, Al, I’m telling you, not a single laugh. You can’t accuse the other professors of being brownnoses, right, Al? I mean, I felt like laughing from the other end of the room just to try and make McGonagall feel a little better about her humour…Rose!” Albus woke up again from his inner tempest to that word piercing his brain like a hammer to a nail. He flashed his eyes upwards from his laces to the flurry of Elizabethan locks that sat luxuriantly atop his cousin’s round head, her cocksure smile like a teacher’s tick on a word-perfect essay. 

 

“Scorpius”, Rose greeted her blond-haired beau as warmly as her tightness could allow, a brush of Scorpius’s arm still being more than enough for Scorpius, who visibly swooned on his heels at Rose’s touch. “I thought I’d wait around for you guys. I suppose the best things come for those who wait”.

 

Albus tutted as quietly as he could to himself, quiet enough so that it would lie undetected but loud enough that his indignation would forever be on the record for the spirits that be to look back on. 

 

“That’s awfully nice of you”, Scorpius ducked his head a little, shyness shining softly through his fair blond fringe. “Well, let’s go in, I’m starving”. Scorpius bounded up to Rose’s side with the lightest of steps, leaving Albus to shuffle behind, the bridesmaid behind the bride’s coattails. 

 

Albus sneered at the glorious rays of sunshine that glittered the gloriously large windows of the Great Hall, both from the enchanted ceiling above them as well as the actual sun bursting into life outside the castle. Sunshine didn’t accurately describe Albus today, he thought to himself; maybe he could have just about held on to an overcast outlook had it just been himself and Scorpius eating the plentiful plates of foods that lined the smooth tables in front of them. But with Rose, beautiful Rose, smart Rose, fascinating Rose? Albus only saw rain. No, not just rain. Thunder. Lightning. Hail. Gales. Tornadoes. Asteroids. 

 

Albus didn’t even look at his timetable when Matthew Dell passed him his as he made his way down the line He tucked it in his robes with a loud enough nonchalance that finally caught the attention of the two chattering jackdaws next to him, turning the attention as Rose delicately tried to split a pain au chocolat into two equal pieces. 

 

“Albus”, Rose scrunched her nose with a backwards bob of her head. “Don’t you think you ought to take a look at that?”

 

“I’ll look at it in a minute”, Albus looked up momentarily from the toast he had spent five minutes over-buttering to look even slightly busy in silence. 

  
“But Al”, Scorpius rested his timetable carefully in front of him away from the crumbs of the split pastry, “we always used to pore over our timetables as soon as we got them in the past. What’s the difference now?”

 

“I guess I came back to Hogwarts a changed man, Scorp”, Albus looked back down to continue to butter his now mutilated slice. “Hey, y’know, Scorp, I just think I’m gonna go and get ready for,” Albus rustled around inside his robes for his haphazardly folded timetable and glanced at his first lesson, “History of Magic”. _Fuck_. 

 

“Oh, well, if you’re sure”, Scorpius looked back down at the pain au chocolat flaking in his hand. “Well, Rose and I’ll meet you there, alright?”

 

“Yeah, yeah, sure”, Albus tried a smile, but it ended up as some sort of tight pouting that he quickly put an end to. “I’ll see you there”. He found himself almost jumping at the speed he was leaving the situation, leaving an open-mouthed Scorpius and a faintly disinterested Rose in his wake. Disappearing through the large doors with the ornate finishings back towards the stairs and bed, he passed his sister’s distant shouts without barely noticing her excitable presence, without even registering the need to feel guilty until he had descended the first flight of stairs towards the Slytherin dungeons. It took all the strength he could muster not to fall back into those beautifully tossed back sheets and gather his books together for a slow death with Professor Binns.

 

***

 

The bleakness of a typical Scottish November weekend made Albus’s skin crawl with perverse delight. The hail lashed against the top of the enormous windows that intimidated the comfortingly austere Slytherin common rooms, lighting up the mediocre fireplace and faded emerald velvet furniture in the most hollow of glows. The waves below the relentless hail crashed in a muted roar against the bottom half of the windows, stifling the grim echoes of the stale water that was being whipped into a frenzy by the toughest of Caledonian elements. Albus revelled in the backdrop of such greyness; the candle in front of his work flickered in obligation, wax dripping slickly down the side in a fanciful effort to escape. It was no use. 

 

Albus had gotten into a rhythm. He’d wake up, eat the bare minimum at breakfast to look polite and not incur the minute possibility of someone asking where he was. He’d always go down at around quarter to nine, knowing that he would miss Scorpius and Rose, who would always head down at least an hour before him, before spending the last half an hour before nine o’clock in the library to finish up on reading or next week’s Transfiguration essay. In any case, he had noticed recently that Scorpius’s sheets hadn’t changed from the perfect flatness that had remained so from the previous evening. And the evening before. And before that as well. _No prizes for what Scorpius has been up to…_ Because of this, he also knew he’d get the common room to himself, feeling calmer alone in his self-admitted dishevelled state than under the sceptical eyes of his barely caring roommates. 

 

Then he’d actually go to classes, always trying to be the last one in so that he could casually take one of the seats on the edge of the classroom so he could slip into anonymity once more, scribbling down inane notes of nothing in particular with his head down and his mouth shut. The evenings would roll by, and a late dinner normally preceded long hours toiling in the library, again on nothing in particular. One would think that Albus would be excelling in his studies considering the amount of time he studied in the library; alas, if they cared to take a closer look at his notes (better described as idle doodles and one-player games of noughts and crosses), his more average grades would make a little more sense. 

 

At weekends, nobody wanted to spend time in the drab Slytherin common room, particularly during the autumn and winter months. (Even the coldest and most calculating of Slytherin hearts found it difficult to find any sort of comfort amongst the haughty portraits and cold wood furnishings of the draughty common room.) Therefore, it was a lot safer for Albus to appear out in the common areas of the dungeons; in fact, he felt a strange comfort in the loneliness of the room, as though the aching foundations and marble beams of the rooms around him could relate to the sinking feeling inside him that seemed to find no end to the depths it could sink. 

 

He’d cast a Fire-Starting Charm at the familiar, but pathetic candle that sat reluctantly in front of him, and he’d sit and ‘work’. He felt lulled into a breathing rhythm set by the lapping of the waves behind him and hardly noticed when a fellow Slytherin would scuttle quickly across the slick marble floor and up into a dormitory. It was the closest he could feel to serenity, to a meditation that helped him cope with his own mediocrity, nursing him to accept his stagnation, his lack of worth. He felt settled in the buttock imprints he had made in the lumpy sofa of his life, a beautiful stillness bereft of challenge and confrontation. 

 

Footsteps clattered like a round of applause from the dormitories’ staircase, and, for once, Albus’s faintest interest piqued above his most elaborate writing of an essay title to date. He didn’t lift his head up, not expecting the footsteps to continue towards the desk he sitting at as they eventually did. Albus decided to lift his head up, instantly regretting so as he surveyed his company. 

 

“Albus”, Scorpius breathed, “I’m so glad I’ve found you”.

 

“You were looking for me?” Albus asked innocently, putting his quill down in an attempt to look as though he was giving Albus his full attention. He tried looking into those deep ice-blue eyes of his, but he felt gravity pull his chin downwards to instead focus in on Scorpius’s chest - admittedly, not the worst place to rest one’s gaze…

 

“Yeah”, Scorpius nodded, massaging his thumb slightly as he also looked away from Albus. “I swear we haven’t hung out together in ages…”

 

“Hmm”, Albus bit his lip, feeling slightly guilty for not having sought out his friend before. He just couldn’t do it. It was too much to ask with Rose constantly sniffing around. Scorpius would understand if he knew the truth. Scorpius must never know the truth.

 

“I-I’m sorry if I’m disturbing you”, Scorpius stammered nervously.

 

“No, no”, Albus gritted his teeth at his own foolish behaviour and looked up into Scorpius’s eyes for the first time. Self-hatred scorched his lungs as he found himself relieved by the insecurity and unsettledness in Scorpius’s gaze, as though he was missing the fizz that made Scorpius sparkle like the most perfect flute of champagne. Albus felt longing grip him, longing to be that one missing ingredient, the one to save Scorpius, the one to bring him back to life. Somewhere deep inside him, he really did wish Scorpius the happiness he wanted for him. But it was drowning in his own self-pity - and when you’re drowning in self-pity, decency doesn't through you a lifejacket. “Sorry, I’m here”.

 

Albus got to his feet, not quite knowing why until he saw Scorpius sniffle a little. He felt his feet move slowly from around the desk and towards his best friend, arms slightly outstretched in an unspoken invitation for some sort of comfort. Scorpius immediately accepted it, crashing into Albus’s front with the grace of a mudslide but the softness of freshly washed sheets. Albus felt tortured by Scorpius’s proximity, by how close he was to being able to claim Scorpius’s feelings for his own, if only he’d just speak, open his mouth, pry the words from the depths of his fiery stomach. Instead, he just stroked his friend’s back, Scorpius relaxing as Albus closed his eyes. 

 

“I don’t see you much anymore, Al”, Scorpius murmured after what seemed like an eternity, insecurity laced into the pain in his scratchy voice. “Where are you? It’s like you’re purposefully avoiding everyone. Lily told she hasn’t seen you literally in weeks. James said he watched you slinking off from breakfast one morning literally having just half a slice of toast before heading back upstairs. I know that’s not you, Al! We ate so much when we were younger! Where have you gone?”

 

“I…I don’t know, Scorp”, Albus shrugged, not feeling particularly in the mood to profess his undying love for Scorpius that day. “I’ve just been focussing on my work, and you’ve been having such a great time with Rose -“

 

“So, this _is_ about Rose”, Scorpius sighed, although not in anger. “Albus, how many times have I told you to tell me about this, if you felt as though you’ve been crowded out?”

 

“I’m not feeling crowded out, you deserve a bit of happiness, Scorp”, Albus was desperate to steer the conversation away from Scorpius’s relationship. “I’m alright, Scorp, honestly!”

 

“Then why don’t I believe you?” Scorpius sniffled again. “I love how well it’s going with Rose at the moment, but I don’t love how it’s going between us. You’re just so…absent…”

 

“Okay, Scorp”, Albus sounded more exasperated than he had meant to and patted his hand on Scorpius’s shoulder to compensate. “What are you planning for today?”

 

“Well…”, Scorpius looked away with a guilty flourish to his glance to the fireplace, “Rose and I were planning on heading to Hogsmeade, just for a different change of scene. I came here to invite you, though. You wouldn’t be third-wheeling, Al, I promise. I’ll sit with you, I’ll make sure you’re included, I promise. You’re my priority, Albus”. Scorpius brought his gaze back to Albus’s, the piercing of that look burning its permanent mark on Albus’s mind, turning it to goo. 

 

Albus surprised himself to find himself wiping the very beginnings of a tear from his right eye from the emotional intensity of Scorpius’s gaze. “Okay, Scorp, I’ll come”.

 

Scorpius let out all the air he had been collecting over the last five minutes, it collecting and condensing into the cold emptiness of the Slytherin common room. “I’m so glad we’re okay, Al”.

 

“Of course we are, Scorp”, Albus’s voice shook slightly, silently dreading the moment best friend Scorpius would become besotted love-duck Scorpius like he knew was going to happen the moment they met his cousin. Albus dug his fingernails into his palm for having such little faith in his best friend. “Are you going now?”

 

“In the next couple of minutes”, Scorpius moved backwards as Albus gathered his parchment and books up and blew out the grateful candle, bringing the corner of the common room into almost total darkness. “You might want your waterproofs, though - it’s raining a bit”.

 

With an over-purposeful swish of his lounging robes, he nodded a quick goodbye to Scorpius and cantered off to get changed, the speed of his actions hoping to rub off the sheer terror that gripped Albus by the throat. 

 

—-

 

“Do you think the Giant Squid ever gets lonely?” Albus wondered aloud as he and Scorpius picked their way slowly up the staircase leading to the portrait guard at the entrance. “I see him sometimes, floating around the Slytherin windows looking pretty miserable. It’s not like he knows how to speak to the mermen or the other fish”.

 

“How do you know what his language status is?” Scorpius pointed out with a chuckle. “He could be fluent in like seventeen languages, like some amazing underwater diplomat”.

 

“You can speak all the languages you want, though”, Albus countered. “You can still be lonely”. Something bitter about his last statement clung to his mouth long after he expressed it. 

 

“I like to think he’s like the old wise elder”, Scorpius sighed, the portrait door swinging shut with a clatter. “That all of the creatures of the lake come to him with their problems and their quarrels, and the Giant Squid arbitrates and keeps the peace”.

 

“You always were the lake-half-full kinda guy”, Albus let himself smile a little, the familiar wash of nostalgia lapping at his heart as he let himself live in their third year, without Rose, without truly understanding his feelings. 

 

“I just don’t want the Giant Squid to live a miserable life in my imagination!”, Scorpius chuckled, the light of their surroundings starting to get brighter just a touch as they exited the staircase to the dungeons and reached the Atrium. Rose was waiting in a poppy red trench coat with a jet black umbrella in her hand, her mouth slightly agape at the sight of a suited-and-booted Albus padded alongside his best friend as they approached. Albus frantically tried to bury the feelings of inadequacy and intense jealousy, a somewhat glass-fragile smile cracking across his chapped lips like ice.

 

“Hey, Rose”, Scorpius breathed, unsurely leaving Albus’s side for a moment to give his (presumably) girlfriend a quick peck on the lips. Suddenly, Scorpius moved to close to Rose’s ear to whisper something, Albus supposing that Scorpius had just failed in his attempt to do it inconspicuously when Scorpius shot a slightly panicked look and a smile in Albus’s direction. Rose gave him back a slightly incredulous look at a scrunched up nose but nodded in resignation as Scorpius padded back to Albus’s side. “You ready to go?”

 

“Yes”, Rose smiled tweely. “Nice to see you around for a change, Albus; Scorpius says you’ve become a hermit!”

 

“Hardly”, Albus put a stray hand through his hair, knowing that he wasn’t altogether too far off the mark. “Come on, let’s get going!” Albus walked purposefully towards the huge open castle doors, handing his crumpled permission slip to a rather bored-looking Professor Flitwick before his umbrella popped up in his hand and he marched out in the sludgy driving rain. Albus heard the harsh crunch of the gravel crackle through the howling winds as Scorpius and Rose caught him up, Rose struggling to keep her umbrella from flying away as they headed against the wind. Albus turned behind him for a moment to make sure that they weren’t too far behind, but didn’t slow the pace, narrowing his eyes against the water that lashed his eyes like claws at the speed he was walking. 

 

“Al!” Scorpius called from just behind him, a crackle of thunder drowning most of his voice out as they neared the school gates. “Al, what’s the rush?”

 

“I don’t know about you, Scorp”, Albus gritted his teeth against the elements, not turning round in response, “but I don’t particularly fancy a stroll in this weather, do you?”

 

Albus heard some muttering behind him, and he rolled his eyes before he could stop himself. “Yeah, but I”m struggling to hold my brolly at this speed, and Rose is almost blowing away!”

 

“Fine”, Albus sighed with a bitter smile, hoping against hope that he wouldn’t have to be subjected to more intense debate on the intricacies of the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy again. He slowed up slightly but was relieved to be able to hear the howl of the wind instead of the howls of Rose’s indignation at being proved wrong on a point. 

 

The trio remained in an uneasy silence until they reached Hogsmeade, the fifth years running under the shop awnings that were clattering against the battering gales like wind chimes. They escaped the rain wordlessly towards the sanctuary of The Three Broomsticks, which was positively heaving with Hogwarts students and locals alike, all hoping to shelter somewhat from the storm ravaging outside. 

 

“I’ll go and get the drinks, Al - you want a Butterbeer, yeah?” Scorpius popped his umbrella down and placed it underneath the coat he had just taken off, shaking the rain from its outer skin onto the doorstep of the pub. 

 

“Er, yeah”, Albus replied, not expecting the silence of the trio to broken. “Sounds great”. 

 

“Cool”, Scorpius smiled. “You go with Rose and get us some seats if you can, I’ll get in the queue…” Scorpius meandered off to find the end of the queue to the bar, which must have been at least two deep by now as more and more people filtered out of the thunderstorm and into the haven of dryness that the pub had become. 

 

“Actually, Albus, I think I must go spend a sickle”, Rose murmured as soon as Scorpius had disappeared. “I’ll be back in a moment - take my coat, it’ll show where you’ve sat us”. Albus furrowed his brow as he watched Rose push her way through the groups of people standing and chatting to find the toilets. He nevertheless sighed in relief that he would have a few moments to collect his thoughts and his resolve before the Perfect Couple would return and make Albus feel repeatedly sick in over-affection and intense jealousy. 

 

He had managed to find a table with stools right next to the wall - in view of the bar, but still far enough away from it. He breathed in for a few moments and then let the stuffy pub air escape his lungs again, the closeness of the fellow drinkers making him feel suffocated and chesty. He hung Rose’s coat around the chair and sat to wait. 

 

After a couple of minutes, he saw Rose’s bushy hair bounce back through the crowd and towards the tall, slim frame of Scorpius who had managed to get a few inches closer to the bar. They exchanged a few words before Rose bent in more closely to Scorpius’s ear, shouting words furiously into his ear as he ordered the drinks. Albus squinted his eyes, trying to read their lips to get a flavour of the inevitable conversation they were having about him until Rose and Scorpius looked back in his direction at the same time, the same uncertain expression painted across their features. Albus looked away again quickly, counting seconds in his head before he allowed himself to bring his gaze back in the direction again. 

  
Albus wished he hadn’t. With one watchful eye of Rose’s on Albus, they had leant into kiss in full view of the pub, gaining a few wolf-whistles from a group of sixth-year boys in the opposite corner as they increased the intensity. Albus found himself gasping for air, even as they eventually moved out of eyesight whilst a horde of burly Hufflepuffs based themselves around the table in front of him. He had to leave. This was a mistake. He had to go, now, before they noticed that he was still here. Thinking quickly, Albus grabbed a loose piece of parchment and a Forever-Ink Quill out of his robe pocket and scribbled the most pathetic of notes across the curling page before placing a sickle on top and dashing through the crowds with his coat, not looking back, not checking they’d found it, just leaving, escaping, fleeing. His coat and his umbrella remained under his arm as he sprinted through the pouring rain, letting himself drown in guilt and self-pity as he kept running back towards the school gates. As he passed through the grounds, he couldn’t tell what was rain and what were tears anymore. It didn’t matter anyway, he supposed. Scorpius and Albus were over.

 

***

 

By the time the train started creaking slowly away from Hogsmeade station at the end of term, Albus couldn’t be happier that he had somehow managed to snag a compartment totally to himself. His disappearing act from The Three Broomsticks had forced the situation, and he knew he couldn’t go back to his half-friendship with Scorpius now he’d insulted him like that. His guiltiness pushed him to the very edge of every classroom, every breakfast, every library. He was truly alone. 

 

The last three weeks of term had been darker than he could ever have imagined his life being, darker than his first four years at Hogwarts had ever been. At every dark moment pre-Rose Granger-Weasley, he could turn towards Scorpius like a sunflower, safe in the knowledge that there would be a light to turn to, the smooth current surrounded by the choppy waves of disappointment and harassment. Now, Albus had pulled up the anchor of his own accord, and he had floated helplessly into the sea of loneliness, encircling him like an irresistible whirlpool, and he was being taken down. At least when he was on his own, he didn’t have to deal with other human beings. Just dealing with the challenge of wanting to give his own body breath for another second took all of his willpower and resolve. 

 

“Albus”. 

 

The door slid determinedly open. Lily Potter sat down with her small suitcase and plonked it loudly onto the opposing seats, James rushing into the compartment in a rare look of bewilderment at his sister’s assertiveness. Albus initially refused to readjust in his seat until Lily coughed particularly loudly, making Albus scrabble to sit up straight to face whatever it was she had to say. 

 

“What do you want, Lil’?” Albus grumbled, still slightly spooked from the brash entrance. 

 

“This ends now, Al”, Lily replied simply. 

 

“What does?”

 

“This”.

 

“I don’t have the mental capacity to play games with you, sis’-“

 

“Funny that”, Lily interrupted, James still shocked to total silence for possibly the first and last time in his life. “I don’t really have the mental capacity to watch you waste away into the ground anymore”. 

 

“What are you talking about now?” Albus tried to assert some authority by taking out his half-read copy of _The Quibbler_ to read, flicking through vaguely to a page he hadn’t thought he’d read yet. 

 

Lily snatched the magazine from Al’s hands with a shove, making Albus leap in pain with the resulting paper-cut. “I’m talking about you, Scorpius, and Rose, Al. I’ve been watching you since the start of term and you’ve let yourself waste away to nothing! You think your family don’t look out for you, and maybe you’ve been right in the past. But this time, me and James are staging an intervention -“

 

“I don’t need an intervention”, Albus hissed, still licking sorrowfully at the paper-cut across his palm. “I don’t need any of this. It’s nice of you to want to look after me all of a sudden, but there’s nothing wrong with me”.

 

“Ah, see that’s where you’re wrong, little bro’”, James piped up in a lower than normal boom, standing as he did so. “Whilst you’ve spent the last three months pining over Scorpius because he’s found a girlfriend before you got the chance to ask him out, we’ve been watching you eat nothing, talk to no one, and generally have a face like a smacked arse -“

 

“Oh charming, James!” Albus rolled his eyes and looked out of the window. 

 

“We know the problem is Scorpius, Al”, Lily huffed, herself now flicking through the magazine with a little more determination than Albus had been. Then, she stopped, and she let her shoulders sag as Albus looked straight into her eye line. “Albus, I know we’ve let you down in the past…and we’re sorry, both of us are…but we do love you, even if we haven’t shown it very well…Albus, we want to help you, to make amends for all the shit we didn’t help you get out of…please let us in…”

 

“And what are you supposed to do to help the situation, eh?” Albus choked in wistful laughter, looking away again to the picture postcard watercolour view hurtling past the window. “Scorpius isn’t interested in me anymore. He can’t even prioritise me as a friend, let alone as anything more. What else is there to do?”

 

“Maybe there’s nothing you can do about Scorpius being blind, Al”, James responded, tossing a knut with his thumb as he did so. “But there’s something we can do about you. It’s time you got out more, little bro’. Did some hobbies, met some new people. They’re there, Al; you just have to find them and let ‘em find you”.

 

“That’s easy for you to say”, Albus scoffed. “You’ve been around each seventh-year dormitory at least twice this year alone!” The remark earnt Albus a dirty look from his sister and a knut in the face from James. “I’m pretty sure Flitwick’s left nipple has more charm than me”.

 

“You don’t need charm, Al”, James rolled his eyes and put a hand through his hand, stopping to look at himself for a millisecond in his reflection in the window. “I can’t believe I’m actually spouting this shit-“, Lily directed her dirty look away from Albus and straight into James’s forehead, who visibly flinched when he saw the darkness in her eyes. “-but you just have to be yourself. You think you’re this mediocre bore, but you’re witty, you’re funny, you’re good-looking because you’re a Potter, and you’re not a shit wizard. You just think you are because you’ve spent so much time thinking you are. Get a grip, Al - even if you’re not destined to be Quidditch captain or discover the cure for a backfiring Oblivious curse, you can still be successful by meeting people and doing things you enjoy and having mates to hang around with. Ugh, look what you turned me into”, James shot feigned disgusted glances at Albus and Lily, “the bloody Agony Uncle of the Hogwarts Express”. 

 

“And Mum and Dad are keen for you to get better as well”, Lily piped in. 

 

Albus sat forward in panic for a few moments. “Wait, Mum and Dad know about Scorpius?”

 

“No, no”, Lily shook her head and Albus began breathing normally again, leaning against the wall for support. “But they do know you’re feeling down; they noticed it over the summer, they asked us to keep an eye on you for them. Luckily for them, we’d already noticed before they’d even sent the owl. Please, Al - give your family a chance, eh?”

 

Albus sighed. He felt claustrophobic from his options demanding such an immediate reaction. Albus thought he would always feel a frisson of anger at his family for casting him as the black sheep of the Potters in his early years at Hogwarts, making him feel as though he wasn’t as special as his siblings or the legacy of his surname that he had a responsibility in continuing. But now, as James and Lily moved over to his side of the compartment to put a comforting arm each around their middle sibling (James’s a little rougher and manlier than Lily’s softer squeeze), he couldn’t help but feel the anger dissipate slightly into the comfort of their eventual support and love for him. 

 

“And you’ll promise never to ditch me again?” Albus felt stupid asking the question, but he needed to know he wouldn’t be cast out again - or at least that his siblings promised they wouldn’t. Whether they’d go back on it was another matter, but he had to give them this chance; with a shaky gulp of breath, Albus realised that his happiness might well depend on it. 

 

“Pinky promise”, James took Albus’s little finger and twisted it round his own. “From now on, we Potters stick together. Gryffindor’s bit for cross-house cooperation”. For that, James earnt a punch in the arm from Lily and Albus simultaneously, making Albus giggle for the first time since records began (if Albus wasn’t mistaken, at least). 

 

“All well and good”, Albus sighed sadly as the giggling calmed down, his siblings’ arms still draped over his shoulders, “but this doesn’t exactly totally solve the Scorpius question”. 

 

“Maybe not”, Lily admitted, “but I think over time, this moment might be the start of something for you, Al. I read this article in the month’s _Quibbler_ ,” Lily turned the previous page back on itself and handed the folded article over to Albus to peruse, “called _Six Degrees of Separation - A Witch or Wizard’s Guide from Break-up to Happiness_.”

 

“Six Degrees of Separation?”, Albus murmured quizzically, skimming the words of the article as his sister spoke. “Isn’t that that game where you have to prove how you’re connected to our dad within six steps?”

 

“Well, yeah, obviously”, Lily rolled her eyes and took the article back off Albus with a tug, “but here it’s talking about the six steps required to get over Scorpius. Look here, it’s got the steps underneath -“

 

“Are you actually taking this seriously, Lil’?” James scoffed into his chocolate frog. 

 

“Yes!” Lily poked James in the stomach with her wand. “Look: ‘first degree - uncoupling: the conscious breaking up of the past relationship so that no remanent remain in the witch or wizard’s life’ - I think that’s you already, Al”, Lily added as she skimmed further down. “‘Second degree - distance: the physical realisation of the first degree -‘ - AKA, your Irish goodbye in The Three Broomsticks… ‘Third degree - distraction, fourth degree - consolidation, fifth degree - commitment, sixth degree - reconciliation…”

 

“That doesn’t really make much sense”, Albus sniffed, craning his neck to get a look at the article again. “What am I supposed to be committing to? And why do I have to reconcile? Isn’t the whole point of this supposed to be me trying to forget Scorpius?”

 

“Oh I dunno, Al”, Lily whined. “It’s just something to think about. When we get back, just try and speak to some more people, get out and do some things you’re interested in. You know you can hang out with us, we don’t bite -“

 

“After the last four ye- sorry”, Albus sighed, biting his tongue before another argument about their past came floating back to the surface. 

 

“If they give you grief, we’ll whip ‘em into shape, Al”, James gave him a pat on the shoulder in that big brother way Albus had never really been subjected to until now. It made him feel safe and uncomfortable at the same time, as though he should reject the affection but he didn’t particularly want to. “Mi common room es su common room, bro’”.

 

“Yeah”, Lily smiled back, standing back up and leaning against the window. “We’re gonna bug the shit out of you, so be prepared to bug us back, Al”. 

 

“Thanks, guys”, Albus looked down to his shoes, his ears burning with embarrassment. “I’ll…I’ll think about over Christmas and I’ll let you know what I decide to do”.

 

“Cool”, James ruffled Albus’s hair and Albus ducked, almost head butting Lily in the process and sending an unwrapped chocolate frog flying, the frog jumping around the room with a roomful of Potters chasing after it. Albus smiled genuinely for the first time in ages, making the briefest of grateful eye contact with Lily before returning to their quest to catch the last chocolate frog. 

 

—-

 

“God, Albus, how much shit are you taking home with you?” James grumbled as he passed Albus his suitcase off the train before disembarking himself onto the steamy platform. Baubles and holly wreaths hung from every available hanging across the entire platform, and a brass band played wizarding Christmas carols from beside the newspaper stand that rang out happily across the terminal. Albus let himself get caught up in the moment slightly, trying his new philosophy on for size. From now on, he’d be living for himself, for his happiness, for his growth. And he’d never been quite so excited and determined to get back to Hogwarts as he was whilst stepping off the Hogwarts Express to come home for the holidays. 

 

Wheeling his suitcase through the crowd, the unmistakable auburn hair erupting over the crowd of waving parents alerted Albus to his mother’s presence. Snaking his way around a particularly large Welsh family waiting for their children to come off the train, he finally reached his parents’ broad smiles as his siblings caught up with him. Dropping his suitcase in his place, Albus felt the urge to run up to his mother and father and embrace him, smiling into the hug as he put his arms around them for the first time in a long time indeed. 

 

“What’s the special occasion?” his father spluttered in pleasant surprise, his eyes wide with shock. 

 

“It’s just good to see you guys”, Albus murmured and found he wasn’t lying. He could make this work. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gotta feel for Albus, even if his reactions are shitty. I promise it'll get happier in the next chapter! Do let me know what you guys thought, especially what you think might happen next! Regular update coming soon!! Thanks for reading guys!


	3. Third Degree: Distraction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The opportunities of Hogwarts finally open themselves up to Albus. Gryffindor takes on Hufflepuff in an all-important Quidditch match, leading to a chance encounter.

_“Third degree: distraction - the witch or wizard must replace their former relationship with friends and hobbies to forget said relationship”_.

 

***

 

Albus woke with an addictive itch of energy in his fingers, the glistening blanket of snow transforming January from its dreary reputation to a sort of Indian Christmas. Indeed, the school was lavished in a sort of post-Christmas daze, even with the beautiful Christmas ornaments and golden draperies having been packed back into the school store rooms over the year. The fever had filtered all the way down to Albus Potter, who had woken up at quarter past seven each day since returning from home at the weekend. The day was his for the taking. 

 

The Christmas that had just passed had been one of the best that Albus could remember, with a record of only two arguments over the whole fortnight. Winters’ mornings had been assaults from James and Lily into getting up early and making the most of the time off to play Quidditch and Muggle football in the back garden, to help decorate the whole house, and to sit around playing board games and exploding snap. Albus couldn’t remember the last time that he had spent so much time around his siblings, but he appreciated the effort that James and Lily were making to include him back into the family activities and festivities. Yes, James was an arrogant bastard and Lily was sometimes insufferably bossy, but Albus knew he was grumpy sarcastic bugger; he especially appreciated that they did their best to accept Albus for who he was, and felt slightly guilty that he had painted his siblings as their archetypes for so long. 

 

By this particular Friday of the first week back after New Year, he’d already finished that week’s assignments and he was down at breakfast at a positively auroral time, much too early even for the earliest of Rose Granger-Weasley birds. The hardest thing about getting out of a life-arresting rut was starting the habits that would take him out of it, but the amount of energy that he found waiting to be exploded into action upon his return to Hogwarts set his motivation on fire like dragon’s breath. Four-year long rut: officially over.

 

After shocking Tilly Shetland from Hufflepuff with a cheery hello and a smile, Albus strode through the Great Hall towards the sparsely populated Slytherin table with the slightest skip in his step. He hadn’t even noticed the white fluffy clouds that hung closely around the ceiling until small specks of star-like snow made him sneeze on his way to the bench.  Tossing a knut into the Prophet owl’s pouch, he unfurled the paper and took a smattering of danishes from the lusciously full silver plates, staying on his feet as he skimmed the headlines ( _MINISTER ATTACKS MUGGLE PM ON CORONATION SNUB_ ) and took a bite of raspberry danish, some of the crumbs flaking to the floor in a hurry as he ate. 

 

“Hey, Albus”, Matthew Dell called as he approached Albus, taking his bowl of pumpkin puffs to his mouth as he scooped at the bowl. Matthew was an interesting case; he and Albus shared a common room together but they had hardly spoken to each other, not even in first year. Albus had clung onto Scorpius’s company for dear life and Matthew had seemed to have fallen in with the Slytherin and Ravenclaw girls more than he had with the rest of the common room. For that, Albus didn’t really lump Matthew in with the rest of the bastards of the common room, who spoke amongst each other in murmurs and smirks but always at Albus and Scorpius, never with. Matthew kept himself to himself in the common room, so Albus decided that he had to speak to Matthew so he cold find something to judge him for. “I swear you never used to be down this early once for breakfast before Christmas, let alone for a whole week!”

 

“Must have been something in the turkey”, Albus looked up from pouring his coffee with a budding confidence that felt like new shoes that would become old faithfuls. “Or the sherry, who knows?”

 

“Well, whatever it was, you get rewarded with the pick of the breakfast trays”, Matthew laughed back, taking another spoonful of cereal. “You read the _Prophet_ too in the mornings?”

 

“Yeah”, Albus nodded, not thinking too much about how much of a lie that was. “Strictly for the pictures, of course! And the puzzle pages, I do like a good crossword”. Now _that_ certainly wasn’t; Sundays hadn’t been Sundays before Albus and Scorpius had managed to complete the _Sly Sunday Stumper_ over mugs of tea and chocolate muffins. Scorpius would be on fire for most of it, getting all the obscure references to random plants and Hogwarts headmasters. But it was Albus would have all the gems of popular culture and random words he had read in books around the Potters’ library or books he had borrowed from Scorpius.

 

“Really? Well, why don’t you come sit with me, Daph, and Ellie instead of on your todd?” Matthew suggested. “It’s shitty we’ve not spoken more when we’ve shared a dorm for four and a half years. Besides, we’re kinda stuck on 14 down”.

 

“Uh, sure”, Albus blinked, slightly taken aback at the offer before he coughed to regain some composure. Maybe James was right when he said he it was easier to meet other people than he thought. Matthew gestured to where Daphne and Ellie must have been sitting on the Ravenclaw table, Albus tucking his paper under his arm and another bite of danish into his mouth before he arrived at the end of the Ravenclaw benches. 

 

“Ah, so Matt actually remembered that there were actually Slytherins to talk to?”, either Daphne or Ellie smirked with a bat of her long eyelashes, twirling her long blond curls with her long fingernails. “You should consider yourself honoured”.

 

“Har har har”, Matthew poked his tongue out at her and plonked his finished bowl onto the table with a small bounce. “I found us another crossword-er, Albus Potter - we share a dormitory together. Anyway, you’ve been struggling with  14 down all morning, Daph, don’t bite the hand that feeds you!”

 

“It’s on the tip of my tongue, stop rushing me!”, Daphne protested, throwing her hair back in frustration as she narrowed her eyes in frustration. 

 

The girl to her right rolled her eyes as she looked up from the letter she had received and offered her hand to Albus. “I’m Ellie Glass. Don’t mind Daphne Harrison, she’s just five coffees away from basic functionality this morning. It just so happens that her thirst for coffee manifests itself in turning back the evolutional clock about three hundred years…”

 

“Masonfield! Masonfield!”, Daphne blurted all of a sudden, clicking her fingers at the quill in Ellie’s hand. “Quick, quick, write it in!”

 

Matthew took their half-filled in copy of today’s _Quixotically Quick Crossword_ , scrolling down the page with his finger until he found the empty boxes, shaking his head. “Nah, can’t be, the ninth letter is a T”.

 

“Shit!”, Daphne spat in her own frustration, taking another swig of her coffee mug as she thought with her intense stare. 

 

“What’s the clue, Matt?” Albus sat down carefully opposite the girls, worried that this was just a fleeting visit and that Albus would be surplus to requirement after he’d solved the crossword for them. 

 

“’14 down: Lead singer of _Anarchy in Hogsmeade_ , 10 letters, begins with M, ninth letter T”, Matthew passed Albus the folded paper, pointing to the stubbornly blank boxes sitting naked in their difficulty. 

 

Albus’s mind’s eye dragged him off his feet and back to his childhood, a seven-year-old Albus Potter sat with a hot chocolate next to the wireless by the fireplace. He remembered how much he loved listening to the music on the wireless when he was younger, even if he wasn’t such a fan of dancing to it. He’d sit on the floor to the wireless with his hot chocolate listening to the rock artists and old songs that his mother and father enjoyed from their school days. Albus listened into his own memory. He could hear an interview with _Anarchy in Hogsmeade_ (a band at which Albus remembered his grandmother taking particular umbrage), their lead singer being - “Oh, Ernest Merryworth, it’s Merryworth. M-E-R-R-Y-W-O-R-T-H”. 

 

“Ah, that’s it!” Ellie smacked her hand on the table in amused annoyance, and Daphne simply downed another coffee as she filled in the letter. “I guess you’ve proved yourself, Potter - take a celebratory pain au chocolat”.

 

“Cheers”, Albus smiled to himself, still feeling dizzy that he’d managed to make friends with people he’d only just met in about five and a half minutes. “Daily crossword a tradition, then?”

 

“It was what we all originally bonded over back in first year”, Matthew tipped his head back wistfully. “Daph and Ellie were sat out in the quad the first Saturday going absolutely spare because there was this one clue they just couldn’t get, and yours truly swanned past and saved their weekends. Without the crossword, we’d probably have killed each other by now”.

 

“It’s been close even with the crossword”, Daphne muttered under her breath, her hand almost shaking with the amount of caffeine taken in one go. 

 

“It’s alright, she’ll be as friendly as a Beagle by about ten tonight”, Ellie joked with a crooked smile. “You’re in our potions practical after breakfast, right? Sit with us - I’m sure you’ll be much better informed on Slytherin gossip than Dell ever could”.

 

“If your definition of better informed is sitting in the Slytherin common room once or twice a year, then I guess I’m your man”, Albus shrugged sheepishly; if he hadn’t even said more than ‘hi’ to Matthew for four and a half years, his friends were going to be sorely disappointed. _At least that would be a new way to disappoint someone…_

 

“Ah, don’t worry”, Ellie winked. “We’ve got much time to mould you into our Slytherin spy yet. Now, what do you think about 21-across here…?” 

 

***

 

Albus woke with a frisson of excitement the following Saturday. Outside, chants whispered their way through the ancient glass of the dungeon windows onto Albus’s soft white pillows, the promise of house victory in that day’s Quidditch match carrying gallant optimism across the winds of the school grounds. Albus smiled slightly to himself as he drunk in the team spirit; four and a bit years in, and he had never really caught himself up in the Quidditch spirit that cloaked the school’s houses every other weekend. He let the chants and the anticipation fill up his cheeks and his veins, launching himself out of bed with his seemingly endless supply of energy.

 

He barely registered Scorpius’s neatly made bed next to his on his way to the bathroom, nodding instead to a dozing Matthew in friendly greeting. Turning on the shower, he was blasted with the juicily warm water from the creaking shower-head. He embraced the feeling that encompassed his body with a bracing flex of his chest, the adrenaline spilling over into the shrill shriek of his singing hissing over the screeching water pressure. He was determined to have another good day. 

 

—-

 

Splashes of gold and red fought tooth and nail with black and yellow across the Great Hall, whilst the crowds of students of all ages buzzed with speculation and bravado of encounters past amongst pumpkin juice and buttered toast. Albus pottered casually past the Slytherin table on the way to the Gryffindor table, where two sixth years had charmed two plush lion figures to walk triumphantly down the long mahogany breakfast tables, roaring arrogantly at passers-by as they sauntered up and down.  

 

Further down the table, he caught Lily’s nervous gaze from across the room, and Albus picked up the pace to greet his sister. Pride stirred unusually in the depths of his stomach; he hadn’t felt quite so invested in the lives of his family for what seemed like forever. He was almost scared at how natural it felt, how right it felt to return to the fold despite their differences. With a swallow of the last frog in his throat, he placed one foot in front of the other and smiled a greeting. “You shouldn’t be nervous, you’ve been in good form this season, right?”

 

“You haven’t seen Hufflepuff this year”, Lily murmured into her scrambled egg. “They’ve been savage on defence and relentless on the attack. We’ve trained ever since Christmas, but they’re beasts”.

 

“And? You’re one of the stubbornest people I know, Lil, you’ll be on it!”, Albus placed an encouraging hand on her shoulder for a moment, and Lily flashed him a quick smile of gratitude. “And…and you’ve got Rose as well, and they say she’s the best Seeker Gryffindor’s had since Dad, right?”

 

“I guess”, Lily shrugged, turning away again as she picked up a forkful of baked beans. “We’ve just gotta do something about those Bottle twins, Hufflepuff’s beaters. They’re effing mad, Al, literally terrifying”.

 

“Ah, they’re pussycats, Lil”, James flashed a cocksure grin at his siblings as he turned around to join their conversation. “They think they’re so tough, but they’re just pussycats. Just tell them their eyes are too close together or something. I’ve always thought there was something slightly unsavoury about them, it has to be their eyes. Weir-“ James finally noticed Lily’s frantic eye movements to stop just as two lumpy shadows blocked out the light from the windows that fell onto James’s lithe figure. James swung round on his arse to face them; Albus stifled a chuckle, not remembering the last time his big brother looked faintly frightened. “Eddie, Edith, what a pleasure to bump into you before the match. I hope you’ll join me in hoping for a fair, clean game, right…?” He trailed off as he watched Edith put a menacing fist in and out of her hand, the skin smacking like fireworks in front of James’s face. “And with that, I think I’ll get ready for the match…er…nice…nice to see you, Edith, Eddie”. James flashed a wonky smile before grabbing two slices of buttered toast and flat footing it out of the Great Hall. Albus and Lily looked at each other incredulously for a moment before bursting into laughter, their guffaws rising above the general Gryffindor chatter in hyena-like echoes.

 

—-

 

Albus always hated the way that the wind would whistle around the Quidditch stadium in a high-pitched whine, even if on the ground the air was still and serene. On that day, it had indeed been so. Albus had delighted a little on the way to the stadium in seeing his breath escape him like from a baby dragon, but as he climbed the whinging, rickety steps of the stadium scaffolds into the stands themselves, he felt the icy breeze curl around his ears like burning-cold tentacles, stinging him every time Albus had gotten used to the sharp chill inside each prick. 

 

The game was already well underway by the time the queue of people had finished clearing the entry to the stands. Albus could hear the coos and songs of the crowd above him mixed in with the bursts of air that accompanied the broomsticks that circled the grounds. Finally poking his head out of the top of the stairs, he picked his way down the steps of the stands, struggling to keep his balance against the whirling gales that toured the arena. 

 

He stepped down into the seats right at the front that hadn’t been filled yet, bumping awkwardly into the people that had already sat down in a barrage of apologies and excuses. He still felt queasy from the wind that threatened to pull him over the edge of the scaffolding altogether, but eventually, he managed to edge his way round to two empty seats around twelve seats around from the exit. Thankfully that he could finally rest his arse and stop his head from spinning, he sat down heavily on the seat and straight into his glare.

 

Of course, he had to sit opposite Scorpius Malfoy, looking out of place in the red and gold that draped his slender frame like tinsel. The moment was fleeting but eternal; even though Scorpius couldn’t have been any closer than six hundred yards across the enormous expanse of the Quidditch pitch, the torment and sense of betrayal in Scorpius’s glare was painfully evident to Albus. Albus felt guilt and the slightest sense of self-loathing drip down his chest for the first time since Christmas; the familiar cloak of despair, a perfect fit. He felt it slowly drown him, slowly drown the momentum he had built up into a black, oily sea, obscuring all the light he had collected over the past month in one loud gulp. 

 

“Umpf!”, Albus hissed, clutching his shoulder in pain. Who knew Scorpius’s glare had the power to injure from distance?  
  
“Oh, shit, sorry, mate!” came the guilty voice from above his head. “You alright?”

“I will be if you know how to fix broken shoulders”, Albus muttered audibly back, trying to twist his neck to see his attacker but pulling back in pain. 

 

“Sorry”, the voice apologised again. “Sounds bastard-y now, but is that seat next to you taken? Been going round and round the stadium and it’s full to bursting”.

 

Albus winced and rolled his eyes, not particularly in the mood to spend time with his attacker, even if it did take his mind off of Scorpius for a few moments. But with no reason to say no, Albus sighed and gestured with his other arm to the seat beside him. 

 

“Thanks”, the voice became a body and head beside him, careful as he jumped down to the space next to him not to hit Albus in the shoulder again. “Ah, you’re Albus Potter, right?”

 

“Yeah”, Albus grimaced as he turned to face the boy that joined him on the platform. He snickered slightly at the boy’s long brown fluffy fringe flicking mercilessly at his forehead as the winds howled through the small space between them. “You’re Sarah Phillip’s brother, aren’t you?”

 

“That’s the one”, Sarah Phillip’s brother shot a curved smile back. “Came to watch my sister take down those bastard Gryffindors once and for all”.

 

“Well, technically, I’m supporting those bastards…”, Albus chuckled softly.

 

“Oh, sorry”, Sarah Phillip’s brother bit his lip in half-hearted apology, his lips creasing at the corners in barely concealed humour. “I thought you were a Slytherin, though? When I heard people talk about you, I swear they said…”

 

“Slytherin Squib?” Albus pouted.

 

“Yeah…”, Sarah Phillip’s brother scrunched his nose in embarrassment, his face showing much more remorse for his second comment than his first. “I’m sorry, that was -“

“It’s fine”, Albus smiled back, placing a quick hand from his unhurt shoulder on Sarah Phillip’s brother’s shoulder. “I am Slytherin, but I’m here supporting my sister Lily and my brother James”. 

 

“Hence the red and the gold”, Sarah Phillip’s brother murmured, a nanosecond of nervousness filtering through for the first time in his slightly skewed gaze to the right of Albus’s eyes before regaining his composure. “I guess that must burn your skin if you wear it too long?”

 

“The scarf’s itching like mad, that’s for sure”, Albus chuckled back. “I’ll have to bathe myself in green for the next week just to get the burning to stop”.

 

Albus heard Sarah Phillip’s brother chuckle with him for a moment as they turned back to watch the match. James was streaking deftly forwards between the fearsome Bottle twins, Hufflepuff’s big-boned Beaters missing James’s head by inches as he flew past them both, the red Quaffle gleaming underneath his tight embrace. Albus wasn’t entirely sure what any of this meant (at home, he just sat on his broom and saved whatever was thrown at him), but he couldn’t help but feel proud of his older brother as James flung the Quaffle straight past the Hufflepuff Keeper and in the central hoop to bring Gryffindor within twenty points of Hufflepuff. 

 

“Potter takes another ten points out of the Hufflepuff advantage as the crowd goes mad!” Harper Jordan commentated wildly, his still-pubescent voice crackling with excitement over the speakers. “Hufflepuff 140-Gryffindor 120, people!”

 

The stadium erupted into another level of tension, flags and scarves waving frantically in support for the two teams. In the teachers’ box, Albus could see Headmistress McGonagall rise to her feet with the Head of Gryffindor house behind her, binoculars clasped tightly to her wrinkled features. Just below came the bellows of Professor Sprout, jumping excitedly in her place, her small round frame an unlikely source for such shrill encouragement. Albus smiled to himself again for what seemed like a record amount that day, as though he was finally part of the school, what it was about, what he was cheating himself from; he wondered if he had been his own biggest obstacle, indeed his own worst enemy, over the past four years. Whether, if he had just buckled down and actually tried fitting in, he might have made it as a Potter heir after all. 

 

 _But you wouldn’t be Albus Potter,_ came the surprising voice of Lily Potter that hit the back of his head like a bullet. Albus liked the way that sounded for a change, a broad grin across his soft cheeks. 

  
“Alright, Potter, just ‘cos you’re catching up!” Sarah Phillip’s brother chided lightly; Albus was too pleased with his progress to care that he must have noticed Albus grinning to himself all this time. Albus just smiled back at his Hufflepuff neighbour, briefly noticing the sparkle in his brown eyes and the gentle creases around his eyelids, and pulled out his Gryffindor scarf to wave. 

 

“Come on, Lily! Come on, James!” Albus croaked unsurely, his vocal support still feeling weird but homely on his tongue. “Come on!” 

 

Breeze sped past Albus and Phillips’s face at tornado speed as Rose Granger-Weasley roared past on her Nimbus 3001, arm outstretched, fingers tantalisingly close. 

 

“This is it, Granger-Weasley’s seen the snitch! She’s oh so close -“ 

 

The Gryffindor stand erupted in a sea of noise and celebration, roaring lions marching triumphantly across the enormous flags draped across the stadium. Albus clapped and cheered, winking kindly at his relieved sister as the Gryffindor team met in the middle to congratulate themselves. Albus climbed out of his seat and to the edge of the stand as he saw James and Lily fly over to see him. (Albus was sure he could see Headmistress McGonagall fist pump from the teachers’ stand as the victory cannon sounded…)

 

“I knew you guys could do it, you guys were being far too modest!” Albus blurted with a grin, patting his siblings on the back as they hovered. 

 

“Speak for yourself”, James barked back. “I always knew we were gonna beat those badger bastards!” He duly ducked as he anticipated Lily giving him a friendly shove to his right. 

  
“Well, Butterbeers're on me tomorrow on the Hogsmeade trip, yeah?” Albus felt warm with belonging as his brother and sister nodded their approval and flew off to get changed. 

 

“Rose!”

 

His veins turned back to ice as he saw Rose swoop over to her boyfriend, their embrace and ostentatiously conspicuous snog making Albus want to throw up over the side of the stand. It was a hand to his pained shoulder that brought him back from vomiting on the crowd below. 

“Oh, shit, sorry!” Phillips winced as Albus jumped in soreness. “Sorry for kicking you earlier, but I’m glad we chatted!” 

 

“Yeah…me too”, Albus bit his lip as he tried not to look quite so in pain as he actually was. “It was nice to get to know you, Sarah Phillip’s brother…”

 

“Scott”, Albus’s new acquaintance held out his hand, his brown eyes shining through the thick Scottish mist like lighthouses guiding Albus to land. “See you around, maybe?”

 

Albus took Scott’s hand, soft but rugged at the same time. “Definitely”. Scott nodded and turned on his heel down the stand towards the steps, popping his head up one more time in Albus’s direction before he left. For the most unfathomable reason, Albus felt as though as all of his Christmases had come at once. 

 

***

 

How thirty-two people could be so obsessed with wizard chess to wait in a queue for the Interscholastic Wizard Chess Championships in the freezing late-February cold was beyond Albus, but here he was, standing in the corridor outside the Transfiguration classrooms waiting to try out. The snow had abated for a change, but nonetheless, the ground was coated snugly with its freezing white blanket up to its neck, hugging the trees and the grass close like its beloved child. 

 

Albus himself had made sure he’d wrapped up warm, his green Slytherin Christmas jumper poking under his winter robes and a long green Slytherin scarf snaked smoothly around Albus’s neck like a boa constrictor, holding itself tightly to Albus’s smooth throat. Recognising that he might be here for a while, he unfolded his creased copy of the Sunday Prophet at the crossword page, picking up from where Matthew and Ellie had challenged him to the _Sly Sunday Stumper_ over brioche and Marmite on toast (a Muggle indulgence). 

 

_21 Down - defeat, outfox (9)_

 

Albus focussed in hard on the paper as he chewed the rubber on the tip of his pencil, the metal holding the rubber to the tip coming off in shavings onto Albus’s teeth as he thought as much as he could. He had loved crosswords ever since he used to do them on Sundays with Sc…over breakfast on Sundays, and the satisfaction of completing one without cheating could be matched, at least in Albus’s eyes, only by the beauty of freshly cleaned sheets and a well-deserved Chocolate Frog. 

 

He shuffled along the queue as it started to disappear slowly behind the ancient wooden doors separating him from thirty-two chess pieces and representing Hogwarts at Ilvermorny in July, but still it eluded him. Destroy? Not enough letters. Vanquish? Still not enough.

 

“Checkmate”, came that voice again from behind, Albus half-expecting to be kicked once more. He jumped in his spot, subconsciously clutching his shoulder in anticipation of the coming sharpness sliding across his nerves like a violin. “Sorry, is it still hurting?”

 

“Scott”, Albus breathed, finally getting his breath back to be able to greet the Hufflepuff properly. “Fancy seeing you here”, Albus pursed his lips and raised his eyebrows playfully, feeling his frustration with the crossword melt away as he breathed in Scott’s warm eyes. 

 

“I’m quite a beast at the ol’ chess”, Scott shrugged, popping his satchel on the floor at his Wellington boots and taking his bobble hat off, unleashing that messy quiff that flopped nonchalantly to one side. “Before I even knew that chess pieces could smash each other to bits!”

 

“You never knew…?” Albus asked quizzically, still taken aback from being surprised so easily. 

 

“Muggle-born”, Scott responded candidly, taking the paper out of Albus’s hands as Albus tried focusing his thoughts on something coherent. “Gave me the fright of my life when I went to take someone’s bishop with my knight and the knight managed to accidentally kick him in the eye with his boot…”

 

Albus just felt himself grinning like an idiot, but he found he couldn’t move his cheekbones out of position when Scott spoke to him; in a perverse sort of way, he wished Scott wouldn’t speak to him so often so he could actually feel the sides of his face again. “They do get aggressive sometimes, those knights”. 

 

“That they do”, Scott agreed with a tiny flick of his eyebrows. “So, you’re here supporting James and Lily again or have I actually found you doing something you actually enjoy?”

 

“Um, this is for me”, Albus rubbed the back of his neck, going back to not quite being able to make eye-contact again and instead inspecting an interesting crack in the floor just by Scott’s left welly. “James and Lily said I should try out, I’m not bad a player, I guess”.

 

“I’m sure you’ll do well”, Scott flashed a quick smile before craning his neck over Albus’s messy mop of hair. “I think they’re calling you, Albus - lemme know how you do”.

 

“Sure”, Albus smiled back, the two seconds of eye contact he managed to bring a roll of electric shocks like thunder across his spine. “Good luck yourself!”, he added as he picked up his things and headed to the door. 

 

“Cheers - hey, Albus, your paper!” Albus turned back round and took the paper from Scott’s outstretched hand. With one more smile and a look over his shoulder, Albus disappeared behind the old wooden door to the chessboard ahead of him. Sighing slightly, he unfurled his paper to place in his bag. Foreign curls sat perfectly underneath Albus’s italic scrawl on 21 down. _Checkmate_. Albus almost caught himself believing that meant something as he sat at the table. 

 

***

 

“You managed to bag a seat at one of Sluggie’s dinners?” Matthew’s breaking voice reverberated around the staircase down to the fifth year boy’s dormitory. “You jammy bastard, Albus!”

 

“Shh, don’t announce it to the bloody world”, Albus hushed him good-naturedly as they approached the portrait on the wall. “Felix Felicis”, Albus announced to the sleeping portrait, who was so shocked to be awoken that he swung open the door without so much as a word of protest. “I don’t really know what I’m doing there, it’ll be full of people with a wizarding lineage like pure gold and Gringotts accounts to match”.

 

“So…like you, then”, Matthew ducked as a well-timed wallop from Albus’s direction missed by inches. “Come on, just because you don’t act like those other snooty bastards, doesn’t mean you’re not intelligent enough or smart enough to be there”. 

 

“Meh, we’ll see”, Albus shrugged. “I’m only going because it’s like a gold dust on a wizard’s CV. Besides, it’ll be better than the pie and mash they’ve got going on tonight in the Great Hall”. 

 

“Well, think of me when you’re indulging yourself with roast Niffler with spider stuffing”, Matthew jibed, patting Albus on the shoulder as he left Albus to get changed. Albus was glad to be on his on for a few moments if he was being totally honest, not wanting the frantic butterflies that were buzzing in his stomach to betray the fact that he was totally fucking nervous for this event and had no one to rely on when he stepped through the door to Slughorn’s office at half-past seven that evening. But Lily and James had challenged him to do it, almost taunting him by using that horrible reverse psychology bollocks. To Albus’s dismay, however, it worked. 

 

Going for half-way between smart casual and dress robes, he decided to wear his long emerald green cloak alongside his white shirt and suit trousers. Digging around in his trunk for a decent pair of socks without any holes in them, he felt his hand brush against an old green dicky-bow that he and Scorpius had found in one of the accessory shops in Hogsmeade back in third year. Albus needed to take a deep breath for the memory, feeling his eyes close cautiously as he and Scorpius larked about in his mind in front of the mirror, trying on cheap dicky-bows until eventually deciding on the matching emerald green ones. He remembered promising that they’d debut you them at the Yule Ball of the Triwizard Tournament of 2022, dreaming of how they’d wow the crowds of people as they descended the steps into the Atrium, their beautiful girlfriends on their arms as they took to the floor. _Fuck, that dream’s showing its age…_

 

Deciding to follow his mantra of living for himself, he slowly picked it up in his hands and hung it delicately around his neck. He struggled slightly with the actual tying part of the tie, but somehow he managed to weave it into something that vaguely resembled a dicky-bow (it at least had been tied into some shape, even if not quite exactly right, but Albus was determined to wear it for himself). Slipping on his ever so slightly less scuffed pair of black shoes with a lace-tying charm, he pushed himself off the bed and towards the door to the common room. 

 

—-

 

“Mr Potter!” Slughorn clapped his hands together with a splendid click as he answered the door, a cocktail of some sort hanging limply between his fingers and dripping on the floor slightly. “Absolute pleasure to see you again, sir! Do excuse an old man a gin martini, young fellow - if gin won’t warm my bones in this winter, I don’t think anything will!”

 

“Nice to see you too, Professor”, Albus smiled, half to himself at the sight of his already tipsy head of house in his luxuriously plush gown at the door. _Only at Hogwarts._ “It looks like a great party you’ve got going, sir”.

 

“That it is, young Potter”, Slughorn nodded with a flick of his gin-free hand to his guests. Albus recognised a few of them; he saw that Pascal Zambini, a jet-black haired, long-nosed third year from Slytherin was sat on a chaise longue with Gina Thorne from the Ravenclaw Quidditch team. But most of them, indeed like most of the rest of Hogwarts, were practically total strangers to him. “Over there is Henry Tybalt - his father, Victor, found the cure for the yellow pixie pox alongside flying Seeker for the Besançon Baleines out in France. Very interesting fellow indeed, I should imagine he’ll follow in his father’s footsteps handsomely. Oh!”, Slughorn turned around suddenly, sloshing his drink across the dark green carpet of his office and almost knocking Albus from his feet, “there is one person you simply have to meet, Mr Potter! He’s a Muggle-born, the dear fellow, but his grandfather Percival was one of the greatest wizarding explorers of our time! Spent five months trekking Antarctica to find the lost wizarding school of Galacia! What a hero the man is, and I’m sure his grandson will surely follow! Here he is, Potter! Scott -“

 

“Scott”, Albus smiled out his name simultaneously as Scott turned around from his previous conversation. Albus had to blink about ten times to fully appreciate how well-turned out Scott had turned out for this poxy dinner. The yellow and black chequers of Scott’s dress robe complemented his dicky-bow perfectly, his perfectly shined shoes shining like stars from the floor lighting up the most irresistible smile that Albus had seen on him. Albus had a rushing urge to have a gin martini at least to make himself say something instead of nothing, but instead he stayed rooted to the spot, unable to stop his mouth from drooping slightly. 

 

“Albus!” Scott’s smile glistened more than even magic could allow. “We really have to stop meeting like this”.

 

“Oh, you chaps are already acquainted?” Slughorn chimed in with no self-awareness of volume whatsoever. “Bah, what’s the point of these parties anymore when everyone else is already acquainted?” With an exaggerated swish of his robe, he turned on his heel and hobbled back over to the counter with the gin and the martini bianco. 

 

“Nice to see you too”, Albus sniffed mockingly, finally able to gain access to his jaw once more. “So you’ve got a famous grandfather?”

 

“Apparently so”, Scott shrugged. “It’s amazing, really. I’m not entirely sure I believe my dad didn’t know that his dad was an amazing master explorer of the wizarding world, but y’know, now I know, I guess. What you here for?”

 

“Nothing, really”, Albus ducked away shyly, taking a flute of whatever non-alcoholic drink was on the passing trays to avoid the question. 

 

“Ah that means you’ve done something really clever, then”, Scott pried cheekily, taking a drink for himself and smugly sipping at the rim of the glass. “Go on, tell me, I won’t judge!”

 

“It’s for being first seed on the Hogwarts team for the Interscholastic Wizard Chess Championship at Ilvermorny and my apparently perfect Draught of Living Death”, Albus tried to say as quickly as possible to the ground. 

 

“You’re first seed?” It was Scott’s turn to have his mouth drop. “That’s amazing, mate! Fucking hell, well done, Al - I…I can call you Al, right?”

 

Albus felt something warm unfurl in his chest at the shy request. “Of course”, he smiled, chinking his glass when Scott offered. “How did you get on in your game?”

 

“Ha, lost within about fifteen minutes”, Scott scoffed whilst perusing the passing appetisers. “I knew I wasn’t gonna be as good as most of the people there, but I’m glad I gave it a go. You though…that’s really something, loads of people turned out for those auditions!”

 

“I dunno, we’ll see how I stack up against the rest of the world, won’t we”, Albus mumbled, only just noticing that Scott’s quiff, which tonight had been waxed over into a sort of rolling fringe, was quickly becoming Albus’s second favourite feature of him after his dopey smile. “Plus it’ll finally give my folks a reason to go abroad this summer, we always stay home…”

 

“Well, look at you with your shit sorted”, Scott winked, a corny smile plastered between his cheeks. “You’ve got the chess team, you’ve got the friends, you’ve got the looks, now all you need’s the girl and that’s your life made -“

 

“Um, the guy, actually…”, Albus hadn’t meant to slip that out. But the more he realised he had done, the better it sounded on his tongue. He was gay. Not bi, not pan. Gay. Everything suddenly made total sense except for the whole world, which currently was revolving around the Hufflepuff with the cute quiff who had just been stunned to a momentary silence by his revelation. “I’m gay”.

  
“Right”, Albus’s heart raced as Scott’s lips formed a thoughtful smile. “Well, all you need’s the guy, and Dumbledore’s your uncle”.

 

“Indeed”, Albus matched his pensive look as he took another sip of his drink. _Indeed_.

 

—-

 

Albus’s lungs breathed the biggest sigh of relief in recorded history when Slughorn had announced that it was to be a buffet dinner so that people could still mingle. Scott had leapt to his feet in a flash as soon as the white sheet was lifted from the buffet table; Albus felt luckily he had found a kindred spirit in this regard, as the two raced to the front of the queue whilst the more refined guests of purer heritage tortured themselves with at least two more rounds of mingling. 

 

Scott and Albus had found themselves to be inseparable from the very beginning. Their positions might have changed around the room - sometimes they found themselves on the chaise longue, at other times leaning against a desk or the vast bookshelves of odd gadgets and gizmos - but their conversations wove themselves effortlessly from topic to topic, feeling no need to separate even for ten minutes to recharge.

 

“You’ve made your bow wonky, Al”, Scott laughed as Albus’s dicky-bow collapsed at the lightest brush of his hand. Albus sighed softly, although more at how nice it sounded when Scott called him ‘Al’ instead of his clunky two-syllable mouth ache than his shitty bow-tying skills. “Here, I’ve got it…”

 

Scott pulled him a little closer so he could get a better grip on the tie and the collar on Albus’s white shirt, but Albus couldn’t help noticing how Scott spent more time shooting glances at Albus’s eyes than he would look down to actually tie the thing. He enjoyed the smooth feeling of the back of Scott’s hand brushing the sides of Albus’s throat and the nape of his neck, feeling warm and safe and electric and passionate all at the same time. He was sure that Scott had leant in further by the time he had fixed the tie because they couldn’t have been more than three noses apart from each other when Scott finally murmured, “There, all fixed”.

 

Gravity laid its soft fingers on Albus’s back, softly magnetising him as he felt Scott’s short breath land tenderly on his pale cheek. He gulped slightly, wishing he’d spent about four hours to psyche himself up for such an event, but it was happening, it was happening now, right that moment, and good God, Albus was drowning in a sea of beautifully round brown eyes. He felt the smoothest of lips lightly press against Albus’s rough ones like silk, a moment from pressing forwards, changing everything.

 

“If you pair are going to be canoodling, at least not do it on my chaise longue”, Slughorn bellowed from the other end of the office with the faintest of slurs. “There are some perfectly nice pillars outside the office…”

 

Albus was far too bewildered by what had just happened to notice that Scott had pulled him from the seat by his dickie-bow and had practically dragged him out of the office door and back out into the quiet of the corridor, the music from the party seeping mischievously from underneath the door as it shut behind them. 

 

“Much better, don’t you think?” Scott breathed as he and Albus leant against the wall. 

 

“I-I-I…yes”, Albus almost choked, even one syllable words evading his grasp as he ached for a second chance of what almost was on the chaise longue. “Sounds good”.

 

“Cool”, Scott moved in again, slowly leaning in with the most uncertain confidence. Albus mirrored the motion, feeling the world begin to turn as he moved forwards himself, as though as he was about to do backflips in zero-gravity for eternity if someone didn’t drag him back down to Earth at some time. He felt their lips graze once more, Albus’s heart right in his throat ready to burst, ready to scream in joy -

 

“Fucking hell!”

 

Albus had the distinct wish to punch the nearest object as hard as he could, his fists beginning to tense up as they pulled away from each other once more. Turning around slowly, he saw Rose and Scorpius in their dress robes, standing rigidly just down the corridor from them. Amongst the anger Albus had for them for ruining the moment, a little shock was nestled in the depths of it; Scorpius hardly ever said anything worse than damn sparingly - to hear such profanity pass his lips was practically unheard of. But it had done its trick. Albus’s attention was well and truly caught. 

 

“Come on, Scorp, let’s just leave them to it”, Rose sniffed disdainfully, but Albus watched as his blond best friend slowly broke ranks with his girlfriend and walked up to the pair, his emotion invisible until - 

 

“ _Locomotor Mortis!_ ” Scorpius flicked his wand at Albus with frightening accuracy, Albus only just managing to dodge the curse when Scott pulled him out of the way of the violet jet of light. “You coward, Albus!” 

 

“I couldn’t do it anymore, Scorp!” Albus shouted into the darkness, the light of the party disappearing as they stepped backwards down the corridor. “I did it so you’d be happy with Rose!”

 

“I told you so many times, Albus!” Scorpius’s voice was calmer, almost menacing. _Like a Malfoy_ , Albus regretted thinking. “I told you that I could handle it, that I prioritised you! That you were for life! So do you really think that I deserved that pathetic note you left on the table, Al? Really, Al? ‘Dear Scorp, I’m sorry this isn’t working anymore - Rose has won. Al’. Pathetic”.

 

“I know it was, Scorp, but I couldn’t think of anything else. I did it to protect your relationship, I cared about you!”

 

“You cared for yourself, Al!” Scorpius bellowed at a force that frightened Albus to his core. “ _Fuck_ , Al! _Densaugeo!_ ” Scorpius’s hex missed Albus by inches, and Albus felt his feet take off and down the corridor, not even bothering to light the torches with his wand or even cast a Lumos spell. He ran and ran like he always did like he always would. He heard Scott yell something in the distance, but Albus kept running. Like he always did. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Drama llama. Is there really any way back for Scorpius and Albus now? And what about this new fella? Much intrigue still to come, guys... Might come back to edit this again later, but for now, do let me know what you guys thought and what you think! Thanks for reading!


	4. Fourth Degree: Consolidation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Albus and Scott get better acquainted. Lily has some news for Albus.

_“Fourth degree - consolidation: the witch or wizard takes their distractions and builds them into their daily routine”._

 

***

 

Albus was running to who-knew-where. All he knew is that he had to keep running. Running for his life. running for his sanity. The grounds disappeared behind him as he ran into the Forbidden Forest, the last gasps of light dissipating into the thick air of darkness ahead of him. He built up speed like he had never felt before, although not out of any sort of conscious skill; Albus just knew he had to go forward, had to escape, had to leave.

 

He felt his veins burst into flame as his vision narrowed to the small speck of light ahead in the ocean of obscurity ahead of him. Maybe it would save him, stop him from running, from feeling as though his heart was going to burst out of his throat into the oblivion opening up in front of him, save for that speck. With the last threads of energy in his aching arms, he lifted his hand towards the light, his fingers outstretched, fingernails scraping the tip of it, bouncing on his fingertips -

 

He tripped over himself, his bedsheets dripping with cold sweat.

 

***

 

Albus had made a point of not even daring to look in the direction of Scorpius’s four-poster, lest he get swept into another argument sapping the very last of his precious Saturday morning energy. Throwing on a pair of tatty jeans with the pumpkin juice stain down the left leg and an old Weird Sisters t-shirt, he slipped on his frayed green slippers and raced out of the dormitory and down the stairs, almost barreling into a particularly touchy fourth-year in a whirlwind of apologies. 

 

The Great Hall was never particularly crowded at any point on a Saturday morning; the kitchen elves were generous enough to keep service well into the late morning and sometimes even until lunchtime if nobody had emerged until very late. Albus was glad for the peace, especially with no sign of his siblings cackling and teasing each other at the end of the Gryffindor table. His eyes drooped a little as he padded towards an empty part of the Slytherin table, sleep still caking his eyes as if he had slept in a sandstorm. Grabbing absent-mindedly at the plate of brioche and danishes lining the silver-plated platters in front of him, he bit down softly, allowing the monotony of the bites to lull him to thoughtlessness. 

 

“Albus!”

 

Albus missed the half-chewed brioche in his mouth and bit down squarely on his tongue, sending him into a whisper of swear words before looking up at a worried-looking Scott Phillips, standing with his finished tray. His usually fluffy quiff was knotted and matted in a Saturday morning laze. The pain in Albus’s tongue abated slightly in humour when he noticed Scott immediately start brushing his fringe with his fingers. 

 

“Scott”, Albus breathed, swallowing painfully the last bit of brioche in his mouth. “Sorry about last night…”

 

“It’s fine”, Scott shot a short smile back, although a simple apology didn’t quite seem enough by the quizzical look in his eyes. “Were you okay? You seemed pretty upset…”

 

“I am for seeing you”, Albus replied, finding himself actually meaning it if the warmth that filled his expression meant anything. “Don’t worry about last night, we had some stuff to get off our chests…”

 

“Well, if he decides to talk to you with his wand, he sounds a bit of a bellend”, Scott put down his tray onto the table beside him to put a comforting hand on Albus’s shoulder. Albus almost shivered at the touch, feeling an inexplicable urge to rest his ear to where Scott had held onto him. 

 

“He’s not a bellend”, Albus sighed. For everything that had happened over the past six months, for how much frustration and anger pulsed through Albus’s veins at the thought of Scorpius’s hand in Rose’s, for all the inexplicable fights and the stares across crowded rooms, Scorpius would never be a bellend. “He’s just…we’ve just had a big fight. We’ll figure it out”. 

 

Scott squeezed Albus’s shoulder again, and immediately Albus felt a little calmer. “Okay. Say”, he added, this time with a frisson of nervousness creeping into his voice again, “were you planning on going to Hogsmeade later?”

 

“Not sure yet”, Albus inhaled, still acutely aware of Scott’s hand on his shoulder. “Why?”

 

“We could go in together, maybe”, Scott shrugged, pouting his bottom lip in the most conspicuous attempt to look cool this century. “If you wanted”.

 

Albus breathed out again, a slow buzzing taking hold in his chest. “Sounds great”, he grinned. “We could go to the Three Broomsticks if you wanted?”

 

“Perfect”, Scott nodded, fidgeting with his hair slightly as he gave one final squeeze to Albus’s shoulder before lifting away; Albus immediately felt the cold air of his absence blow against the light fabric of his shirt in a howling gale. “Meet outside the Great Hall at half twelve?”

 

“Great!” Albus flashed a grin as Scott went to turn away to empty his tray. 

 

“Hey, Albus”, the nervousness returned for a moment. “This…I don’t want to…this is like…a date, right?”

 

“If you say so”, Albus almost winked, but he restrained himself. Fuck, why was he restraining himself? He had a date!

 

—-

 

But the scalding anger in Albus’s ice-blue eyes wouldn’t escape Albus’s mind, even as he tried to let the water vapour from the steaming shower envelope his consciousness. Sorrow slashed through him like a sword as he heard Scorpius blast incantations in his wake as he fled, the dark shadows of the potions corridor flashing in a rainbow of colours as if in a technicolour thunderstorm. Albus thought he knew Scorpius, that he would only ever even attempt duelling someone if it were life and death, or they had really deserved it. 

 

 _“_ Maybe I really did deserve it”, Albus choked out to himself, the shampoo running out of his hands into a plastic blue pool at his feet. He didn’t even offer Scorpius the opportunity to live without Rose if that’s what Scorpius really wanted. Fuck, he didn’t even say goodbye to his friend properly, even if Albus were still going to end the friendship anyway. All those years of built up trust, of adventures, of mutual respect… Suddenly, Albus felt the Scorpius’s agonised rage rumbling through his veins as Scorpius’s howling incantations blew through his eardrums. 

 

But what was he supposed to do now? Confront Scorpius? Repair their friendship? Albus felt the tug of fear hold its arms around him comfortingly, patting his back as it told him to sit back down, to keep away. And besides, since their estrangement, Albus had really started to make something of himself. He had made new friends who actually cared for his company; his siblings had come to appreciate him for who he was, not for his House nor for his social life; the most gorgeous boy Albus had ever seen (Scorpius was more beautiful than gorgeous) had just asked him out on a date; and Albus was finally showing his stripes as a wizard, with his potions and his good grades in Charms and Magical Creatures. Before this, when it was just him and Scorpius against the world, he had few friends; his family didn’t understand him; he never even thought anyone could love him, boy or girl; and he had resigned himself to the title of ‘Slytherin Squib’. 

 

“How can I give that up?”, Albus muttered, the tickling water dousing itself like honey over Albus’s scalp. He would always be grateful for Scorpius’s friendship through those dark years, particularly when no one even wanted to speak to him for being so weird and quiet. But now Scorpius was holding him back. Albus had flourished without him. He couldn’t let things go back now. 

 

***

 

“God, I needed that”, Albus coughed as he finally emerged from his glass of Butterbeer in front of him, the froth covering his newly clean-shaven chin. He felt it slip down his throat with a satisfying gulp, turning up the toasty heat already radiating through his veins at the thought of a date with Scott. “How’s yours?”

 

“Nice”, Scott nodded in approval, setting down his pint glass with a hearty thud. “Well earned after that trot in the cold, don’t you think?”

 

“Definitely”, Albus flashed a shy smile back, wiping his foam moustache from his upper lip. He took the silence to appreciate how good Scott was looking today, even in his bog-standard Hogwarts uniform. He loved how his yellow and black tie complemented his earthy eyes just so, how comfortable his robe hung over his broader shoulders. Scott was the sort of person who wore clothes effortlessly, as though he was a shop mannequin posing in a shop, carrying them off with the most subtle of attention grabs. He certainly wasn’t ostentatious, but there was something about his demeanour that made Albus want to look at him at every possible moment like Albus was drawing energy from Scott’s effortless perfection. 

 

“Albus? You there?” Scott waved his hand in front of Albus’s eyes, Albus jumping back into life when he realised he had drowned in his soliloquising inner admiration. “I hope I’m not so boring that you’ll be nodding off like that every five minutes!”

 

“No, no, no!” Albus shook himself and took another swig of his Butterbeer. “I was just thinking, that’s all”.

 

“Yeah, it was deafening for the rest of us”, Scott jibed back playfully, letting his fingers play with the base of the glass. 

 

“Sorry, we’ll actually talk”, Albus giggled nervously. “Did you get back alright last night? I still feel really bad for running off last night…”  
  
“Seriously, if I had someone so close to me throwing hexes at me, I don’t think I would have reacted any differently”, Albus’s heart lurched as he felt Scott’s hand rest on his fingers for the shortest of moments. “It must have shocked you”.

 

“Just a little…”, Albus pulled on his collar. “I was expecting a shouting match…I never expected that he’d actually want to cause me physical harm”.

 

“Well, I can’t speak for him, but I definitely can’t think of anything I’d wanna hex you for”.

 

“Even though I left you to try and fend him off? I swore I heard him shouting spells at you when I was running…I never realised I was such a coward…”

“You’re not a coward, Al”, Scott rolled his eyes when Albus flashed him a most unamused glare. “Alright, you could have been braver. But the fact is that your best friend turned on you for whatever reason it was, and it spooked you. I was just thankful I was with you when it happened. And that shouting you heard was me fighting back, mate. For someone who only knew he was a wizard four years ago, it shocked me that I went for my wand before my fists!”

 

“Nah, you’re a natural”, Albus chortled quietly, wishing the natural ability to duel came to him quite so quickly. 

 

“Really?”, Scott looked as though Albus had just told him that he was actually his Aunt Mildred. “You didn’t see me hold my wand the wrong way up for the first two days of first year. Was so pissed off with it that I almost wrote a letter of complaint to Ollivander’s before Professor Longbottom kindly took me to the side and let me know…”

“Ah good ol’ Neville”, Albus smiled, Scott giving him a weird look for using the part-time Herbology teacher’s first name. “Family friend. So…it must have been weird when you found out?”

 

“Just a bit…shocked my parents a bit, but the lineage is only two generations before me, so they must have hidden it pretty well. I just remember all of these owls circling our house for about three days before we finally replied to the letters; my Dad swore someone was playing a really crappy joke on us!”

 

“It must be so weird not growing up with the fact that you’ll be able to do magic some day”, Albus shook his head, grateful for maybe the first time in his life that he wasn’t like his father in this regard.

 

“You couldn’t imagine”, Scott pursed his lips. “I remember I had friends who wondered why I had just disappeared from the playgrounds and the local secondary school. I think the current story is that I was sent to this posh boarding school on a scholarship -“

 

“Which isn’t technically incorrect!” Albus pointed out.

 

“Well, yeah, so they just think I’m this posh snooty bastard now…”

 

“So, the Muggle world’s loss is our gain”, Albus winked, chinking his glass against Scott’s jokingly but making Scott turn slightly red, in turn making Albus turn even redder in contest. “Do you ever…like…miss being a Muggle?”

 

“Erm…not really”, Scott laughed, twiddling his wand handle in his lapel pocket as he did. “I guess I’m lucky…I can flit between the two, I know the cultures of both so it’s not so bad for me. It’s a bit awkward though going to get milk from the corner shop and trying to pay with a sickle…”

 

“But do you feel…like…accepted as a wizard, now?”

 

“Wow…deep…”, Scott’s eyes widened with a grin. “Well, I wasn’t quite expecting a job interview when I asked you out…!”

 

“Sorry”, Albus went red again and sipped his drink with an uneasy slurp. “It’s just interesting…and you’re a lot easier to talk to than m’ dad”.

 

“It’s fine”, Albus went redder when Scott took his hand again, this time for more than a few seconds. “Yeah…I think I do…I have friends, I’m not shit at magic…you’re not a bad addition, I guess…”

 

“Well, now I feel very special”, Albus’s cheeks burned and he had to look over at the cosy wooden ceiling of the pub. But then his eyes drew back to Scott’s so naturally that he didn’t even feel them move, and suddenly he was back in those depths, those swirling brown wormholes that Albus couldn’t escape as hard as he tried. It was fair to say that Albus never felt like trying too hard. 

 

—-

 

“I guess officially it was my third-year mini-crush on Gregory Jessop in the year above that made everything finally click into place”, Scott was reminiscing about loves past as they started the walk back towards the Hogwarts grounds, Albus far too invested in his date’s every last word to even notice the blossom rain down gently on them from the budding trees in the light spring breeze. “Now that guy was hot”.

 

“Should I feel threatened?” Albus lifted an eyebrow mock-accusingly. “Now I’m gonna have to go and hex Gregory Jessop!”

 

“Ha, I think you’ll be alright, Al”, Scott placed a hand on Albus’s arm. “He’s been snogging Tara Benson in the common room three hours every night for about six months now, you’re not in much competition”. 

“Could be bisexual, y’know?” Albus pointed out with a tip of his chin. “Get with the twenty-first century, granny”.

 

“Okay, you might have to go an’ hex him after all”, Scott shrugged in resignation, earning a playful shove from Albus. “But I get to be your damsel in distress, so I think I win either way…”

 

“Well, that’s if you’re worth saving…”, Albus murmured with a smirk, getting the shove given right back again. 

 

“Go on, then”, Scott mumbled as he put a couple of Pepper Imps in his mouth whilst handing Albus the bag, “how did you find out?”

 

“Erm…” Albus suddenly felt quite hot under his robes and his collar at such a question, itching to get out of all of his layers and avoid the subject entirely. Things were going far, far too well to even begin to mention what had been happening with Scorpius, not to mention the fact that he had taken Albus’s flight the previous night a lot better than Albus ever would have expected. He knew he couldn’t bring it up, but he wished he had cooked up some sort of lie for when this moment eventually came up. Nothing came to him, no one, not even a famous wizard that he vaguely found attractive. Just Scorpius. Scott. Scorpius. Scott. Albus felt his brain start to melt… “I dunno, I guess I’ve always just known…sort of like a gradual thing. And I guess I was so into my friendship with Scorpius that I never even thought about having a boyfriend and it all just sort of went onto the backburner...and now me and him are fighting and I’ve finally had this like awakening and it’s all so new and strange and I’m a bit nervous and I’m not sure if I’m even doing it right, especially after last night and what almost happened on the chaise longue and now I’m pretty sure I’m babbling and-“

 

“Albus”, Scott interrupted him, and Albus finally fell quiet. Then it happened, as quickly as the brightest flash, but as slowly as a Sunday snooze. He felt his eyes close subconsciously and his arms open forwards as Scott locked his slightly quivering lips with Albus’s own very chapped ones. The brevity of the moment stretched on into infinity; Albus felt the gentle hand of nature push his own hands forward to pull Scott closer, his hands eventually falling around Scott’s slender waist. Eyes still closed, Albus pushed back with his own lips, calmness starting to mingle softly with the adrenaline shooting through his arteries like lead. He smiled into the kiss as Scott let his fingers brush slowly through Albus’s untamed fringe. With one bounce of the nose, Albus dared to open his eyes. And then it ended, as quickly as it started. Albus felt as though the floor had opened from underneath him as soon as he looked straight into the sparkling depths of Scott’s soft gaze, but he let himself fall into the comfortable abyss, revelling in its infiniteness. 

 

A hand to Albus’s face eventually brought him tenderly back to his own two feet, and Albus blinked the dreaminess out of his eyes, determined to make sure this wasn’t a dream. _This better not be a fucking dream…_

 

“Still feeling nervous?” Scott asked him quietly as he brushed Albus’s cheek with his thumb. 

 

“N-n-not so much”, Albus murmured back, almost at a whisper. “Have…have you done that before?”  
  
“No, as long as you’re not counting my pillow”, Scott joked, Albus’s breath catching again. _His first ever kiss and he’s still cool enough to make jokes…_ “You saying I’m a good kisser?”

 

“Well, it definitely seemed like you knew what you were doing!” 

 

“I can’t help it if seemed like the most natural thing in the world to do at that moment”, Albus felt amused embarrassment glow right to the tips of his toes. “I’m always up for a bit of practice, though…”

 

“Enough with the clichés”, Albus laughed, the back of his hand brushing Scott’s knuckles with small pulses of electricity rattling his teeth. Putting one absent-minded foot in front of the other back towards the sun-dappled grounds, he concentrated on Scott’s index finger softly prying its way into his palm, Scott’s middle finger and his thumb joining before the game was up and he squeezed his whole hand into Albus’s grasp, as though he was pressing the most precious heirloom into his possession, so fragile it could shatter at the slightest squeeze.

 

Lifting his heavy head leftwards, his breath shaking with the magnitude of Scott’s gravity, he caught a glimpse of Scott’s shining eyes through the spring haze and suddenly the cliché notched up another two gears, entranced as he was. Two years ago, he would have torn people like him apart with Scorpius over a wizard chess marathon. They would have been vicious in their takedown of making such garish expressions of infatuation and soppy eyes and hand brushes and long, deep kisses. But if ever he wanted to be proven a complete and utter hypocrite, it was neck high in the depths of his Scott-fuelled lull.

 

***

 

“Wow”, Lily mumbled, eagle-eyed over the steam emanating like small clouds from her piping hot chocolate. “…wow, Al, that’s…that’s great!”

 

“Yeah”, Albus licked his lips, quietly revelling in this rare display of Albus legitimately having his shit together. “Yeah it is”.

 

“And you’re meeting up again soon?” 

 

“Yeah, he said he was planning something for Saturday, but he wouldn’t tell me what”.

 

“Ah, so he’s the romantic type?” Lily raised her eyebrows, frightening Albus slightly as he had flashbacks of their mother’s smug expression every time she had found them out doing something their father wouldn’t approve of. “Cute”.

 

“Shut up!” Albus’s redness had eclipsed the sunset beyond the courtyard’s walls before his resolve broke once more into a crooked grin. “I am kinda excited, though”. 

 

“You should be”, Lily nudged him lightly on the arm. “I mean it…I am really happy for you…”

 

Albus furrowed his brow. “So why am I getting the distinct impression that a ‘but’ is coming?”

 

“There isn’t…”

 

“But?” Albus’s redness was really starting to disappear as reality set in. 

 

“I-saw-Rose-and-Scorpius-having-a-fight”, Lily squeezed her eyes together, seeming pained. The rest of the air in Albus’s lungs streamed strongly through his nose as he processed the information. Suddenly, every question Albus could possibly think of flashed through his mind quick as a Firebolt through synapse and brain cell. Did this mean that Scorpius was single again? That they wouldn’t be holding hands anymore? That he wouldn’t have to face their relationship every day for the rest of his fucking life ever again? That Albus might actually… No. No, no, no, no, no, no. 

 

“That…doesn’t mean that anything’s changed, Lily”, Albus sighed, pressing down his inner demons with the harshest of gulps. “It just means that they were having a fight”.

 

“But it didn’t seem like that”, Lily replied slowly, picking over her words like rocks on a jagged cliff edge. “They were getting personal…they even mentioned you a couple of times…”  
  
_What? When? What about? Why?_   “So what? They spoke about me, hallelujah”.

 

“Albus…you told me once that you were in love with Scorpius since about two years before you even knew you could be in love with someone”, Lily squinted her eyes in disbelief. “I thought you might want to know because it might mean something for you and Scorpius! You seriously don’t care that he and Rose seem to be arguing about you?”

Albus sighed once more, the act becoming more and more boring the more he did it. “Yes…I guess…I guess it does bother me. But because I want Scorpius to be happy, and not to be arguing with his girlfriend the whole time. Just because he was arguing about me doesn’t mean it any of my business and that anything is going to come of it. Scott makes me really happy, I want to get to know him more and see where it leads…I’ve actually made friends all on my own since I finally stopped being so hung up on Scorpius…I’ve got close with you guys again…I’ve let Albus be Albus…it’s not good for me to go back to how it was…”

 

Lily remained quiet for a moment, and both of them looked despondently into the puddle of the previous night’s rain that filled the middle of the quadrangle. Was it really the end of an era? Did it have to be, was there no way back? For a moment, the anger and the bitterness melted away like dew into the grass and the soil; Albus shivered as he remembered the love he had for his best friend, _his person_ , who he felt was his soulmate. As much as he resented him for passing him over romantically and for skipping on their friendship over the past year, he felt terrible that Scorpius was having such a bad time with Rose, all because of him. What if he had been wanting to make things up with Albus again and Rose didn’t let him? What if he didn’t want to but Rose was pleading him to? In any case, he couldn’t stand the thought of Scorpius arguing at all; it ruined the image that he had always had of Scorpius before all this had started, the image of the kind and gentle Scorpius that always tried his best to see the best in people, or the selfless Scorpius that helped everyone with their homework. His mind’s eye’s gaze softened as he remembered the times when Scorpius stood right by his side when he didn’t have to, all the times they took the shit that everyone threw at them together, united, best friends. Albus felt sick from the past, as though the distance had thrown him into a jet lag of memories and emotions gone by. He clutched his head and focused on the water. 

 

Lily broke the siblings’ long silence with a short huff into her chilling hot chocolate, the ripples casting small waves around the rim of the mug. “So this is the end of Albus and Scorpius, then?”

 

Albus bit his chapped bottom lip with a short burst of intensity. “If I want to make a good go of it with Scott and keep on getting better…I guess so…it’s not like he’s changed his behaviour towards me since we argued…besides, I’ll still bump into him around the common room and the dorm…and I’m sure I’ll see him with Rose over summers and…long…long into the future…” Albus lowered his gaze to his shoes before huffing suddenly and looking intently into Lily’s eyes with a resolute pout. “This is the end, Lily. It has to be”. 

 

“Okay”, Lily whispered softly as she squeezed her older brother’s shoulder, pushing herself to her feet and padding away with her mug across the mud-sodden quadrangle. Only when Lily disappeared behind the large pillars of the walkway beyond did Albus allow the tears raging behind his eyes like a tidal wave to come spilling across his lap into emotion’s oblivion. 

 

***

 

“ _Reparo!_ ” 

 

The hands of Albus’s old pocket-watch remained resolutely stuck to the twelve. It didn’t matter right at the moment — he made sure that he was early for meeting Scott this time (on the last date, he had spent so long getting ready for the last Hogsmeade trip of the year that they had missed the professors checking the permission slips), especially considering it was the last day of term. But Albus could have sworn that he had managed to get the Repairing Charm down back in February, and he had managed it already in the O.W.L. Charms practical exam. Maybe he was just rusty. 

 

He put the rusty old thing back in his robe pocket, before taking it out again and playing with the clasp that opened and shut the lid. The click of the metal against the rim of the clock-face was satisfyingly crisp; it rang out triumphantly into the echoey chambers of the Slytherin dungeon’s entrance, even if a little arrogantly considering that it currently only showed the right time twice a day. Nonetheless, Albus smiled. Despite his fidgeting, his slight nerves, and the sense of sadness that accompanied having to be without Scott for three whole months, he felt the burgeoning flame of optimism burning softly within his walls. It had been three months and one week since their first date in The Three Broomsticks, and, to Albus’s surprise, nothing was going wrong. He still had his friends in his dorm, he still had his siblings and their friends, he still had his hobbies, and somehow he still had Scott. His mind flickered, cosy like old film and photo prints as he thought about him; how his quiff whipped the wind gently like the steam of the Hogwarts Express; how his jokes and his anecdotes would always caress his chest like the warmest of peppermint teas. It was a different feeling from those he had for Scorpius; his feelings for Scorpius had been of belonging, of recognition, of togetherness against the rest of the world. With Scott, all Albus had to do was be himself - his struggle against the rest of his peers had become ancient history. 

 

Albus took out the pocket watch again, thumbing over the back this time as his mind clouded its vision back to when Albus had first got it. He exhaled shakily as he cast his mind back to that second-hand shop he and Scorpius had visited in Diagon Alley, digging through the bargain bins, knickknacks at a sickle and ten each. He remembered thumbing over the dented shell and opening it carefully, shocked that the contraption still ticked even then. Ever since, he had kept it with him as a reminder of that day, a reminder of Scorpius and their friendship, he supposed. Albus rolled his eyes, feeling sick from yet another coincidence-cum-cliché in his life. 

 

Footsteps betrayed an intruder into Albus’s thought bubble, but excitement flared in him as he reckoned it must be Scott. His eyes flicked up to the staircase below him with a curiosity tempered into stone by the arrival of a cautious Scorpius slowly ascending. Albus’s hand grew tighter around the watch, sheltering it from Scorpius’s view as his blond best friend reached the top step with a final stretch up the banister. For a moment, Albus’s gaze was caught in the crossfire of Scorpius’s, and suddenly the pain felt real again for the first time since the Slug Club dinner. He felt rejection coarse through his mind at a thousand knots, loneliness hollow him out like a jack-o-lantern, carving away at his innards until he was just flesh and bone. The clock swung backwards, and suddenly Albus was fourteen again: alone and unwanted. 

 

Tearing his gaze away from Scorpius without a word, Albus heard a small huff from Scorpius’s direction before Scorpius walked over to the portrait to give the password. Then the echoing footsteps stopped.

 

“Is that what our relationship has become, Albus?” a shaking, uncertain voice came from across the hallway. “You can’t even bear to look at me anymore because you’re not getting the attention you want?”

 

Albus considered ignoring it, but the flames of anger that lapped at his throat couldn’t be held back, and suddenly they emerged with a yank of his jaw. “How can you say that when you’ve spent an awful lot of time not wanting to even want to talk to me?”

 

“It-it’s you that’s been giving me the silent treatment!” Scorpius whined, although sounding a little more sure of himself this time. “It’s you who refuses to give Rose a chance to be your friend, it’s you who disapproves of our relationship, it’s you who refuses to be a part of my life anymore…”

 

 _Trust me, Scorpius, it was for your own good._ “And where was the room for me exactly in your relationship? That’s right, there wasn’t any because you were so besotted with your intellectual equal that you were too busy discussing the cakes at Madam Puttifoot’s to notice that I was crowded out by you two, that there was never going to be room in that relationship for three!”

 

“You never gave it a try”, Scorpius was doing his damnedest to change Albus’s long-standing impression of his placidity. Scorpius’s long, boney index finger was pointing accusingly at Albus like a wand ready to duel. “You were never interested in our relationship in the first place! I know Rose has been pretty bad to you in the past, but she wants to put things right, to make things up! She knows how much she had messed up before but she really wants to make everything okay again! She misses you…”

 

“ _I_ missed you, Scorpius!” Albus found himself almost roaring, the anger bubbling right up to his chin. “I missed you so, so much, Scorpius! You were my only friend before fifth year, and suddenly the only guy I trusted with my life and with everything that’s ever been important to me has swanned off with a girl who had been slagging him off to all and sundry for the past four years! And I’m supposed to be happy that you replaced me with that? After everything we’ve been through, everything we had to endure to get to that moment? How fucking dare you, Scorpius? How fucking dare you?”

 

“How dare I?” Scorpius was almost shrieking by this moment, Albus’s heart breaking in anger and despair when he saw his old friend put his hand on the wand handle poking out of his robes once more. “You have the friends, you have that Hufflepuff on the go, James and Lily are your friends again - why the hell are crying to me now for? You finally have everything you wanted, but you didn’t give a shit when it was me when I finally had everything I wanted with Rose! Why do you suddenly care now?”

 

“Because maybe before all this, before Scott, before the others…I actually thought that we were worth saving, that your place in my life mattered above all else. You don’t even know really what our relationship is for me because you moved on with Rose too quickly for me to get a word in edgeways…”

 

“You…why didn’t you…?”

 

“Because I never stood a chance, did I, mate?” Albus sighed, shrinking in his stature, doing his best to keep his temper under control. “My feelings never stood a chance against yours for Rose, you fancied her too much. I could have looked after you, I could have been there for you for as long as you wanted, without the added four years of making you feel like total dog shite. I would have been all yours, I was prepared for that…but that’s not what you wanted, Scorpius, and I had to readjust to cope with your changing life…”

 

“Albus, tell me now”, Scorpius’s guard fell spectacularly quickly, almost adorably as the angry Scorpius shrank back to the earnest Scorpius that Albus had cherished so much. “Tell me how you feel”.

 

Albus closed his eyes and shook his head; if Albus told Scorpius the truth, he faced either rejection or reciprocation. He, naturally, was expecting rejection, but he couldn’t deny how enticing the idea of reciprocation was when it was so tantalisingly close in front of him. He could take it if he wanted to. However, the more Albus thought about possibly coming clean, the more his chest ached at the thought of the heartbreak he’d cause Scott, and how much he absolutely did not want that to happen; he knew he was onto a good thing with Scott, and Albus had surprised himself with how he was able to be so easygoing and relaxed around another person that wasn’t Scorpius. He couldn’t let that go, and he couldn’t let himself regress back to how it was before Rose and Scorpius got together. Just him and Scorpius alone against the world didn’t work anymore. He couldn’t go back. 

 

“Come on, Scor, we have to go if we want to have enough time in Hogsmeade!” Saved by the annoying cousin. “Albus”, Rose dipped her head curtly. _Like a true Slytherin_ , Albus noted in amusement. “Scorpius and I were just heading to Hogsmeade one last time before summer. I would invite you to join, but you’d probably throw it back in our faces because you care more about yourself than your best friend’s happiness”.

 

Albus chuckled to himself and addressed Scorpius as warmly as he could muster as he replied, “You’re alright, thanks…I have other plans anyway. You two go and have a good time, though”.

 

“Fine”, Rose snapped, not even registering the regretful softness lacing Albus’s reply. “We’ll see you during the summer, I’m sure, Albus. Come on, Scorpius, we don’t want to waste too much time!”

 

Scorpius was having his arm almost dragged down the steps of Slytherin dungeons, looking back at Albus with a regretful look matching Albus’s own. With a wave and a sad smile, Albus watched his oldest friend disappear down the stairs. He couldn’t help wondering what Scorpius might have said had he admitted the feelings he had bottled up for so long, but he also felt that Rose’s interruption had meant something: if it wasn’t meant to be, it wasn’t meant to be.

 

“Scorpius Malfoy didn’t look too happy just now”. Just the sound of Scott’s voice was enough somehow to bring Albus into a frenzied calm, the beating thud of his heart purring into a smooth caramel warmth spreading across his lungs. 

 

“No, he didn’t”, Albus agreed quietly, not wanting to divulge their conversation right at the moment — there would be time, Albus was sure. Finding himself smiling as Scott approached him, he leant forward into the kiss he had been thinking about over the long and lazy final day breakfast. However, when he came back out of it, Albus realised it hadn’t gone quite as he had hoped. Something tiny, something absolutely minuscule lacking from it to make it the perfection he had gotten used to, yet it made all the difference. “Are you okay, mate?”

 

“Yeah”, Scott breathed, looking closely at a spot just behind Albus’s right ear before biting his lip and sighing. “No, not really, Al”. 

 

“What’s happened?”

 

“I…I sorta overheard your conversation with Scorpius just now”.

  
“Ah”. Fuck. 

 

“Al…I…you spoke with so much emotion, it was like…it was like you loved him, like you wish that it were you with Scorpius and not Rose…and I kinda see how that would make sense, I knew you said you were really close before this year…but I can’t compete with the levels of emotion you were having in that conversation -“

 

“There’s nothing there, Scott”, Albus felt his breathing become more and more irregular as he felt the happiness he had worked so hard for begin to slip between his fingers like ice. “We were really close once, but I had to get over it and now I’m the other side and I’m so much better for it!”

 

“So you admit that you had feelings once, then?” Scott was standing uncomfortably far away from Albus; Albus wanted nothing more but to stop the conversation and wrap his boney arms around Scott’s slender waist. “You admit that you liked him? Loved him?”

 

“I don’t know…if I loved him…”, Albus sighed finally. He wasn't going to get away with not having the conversation today. He licked his lips in thought, determined to give Scott the truth he deserved. “I was pretty much in love with him, I don’t know if there’s a difference…he was definitely my best friend…he still is, despite everything, I guess…I don’t know, Scott…this is in the past, all this stuff -“

 

“Is it though?” Scott interrupted, his hand resting on his chin and covering his mouth as though he was guarding himself against Albus breaking his heart. “Is it? Looked to me as though it was still pretty raw based on the shouting and screaming match you two were having. How am I supposed to compete with that, Albus? How am I supposed to compete with the feelings you have for him?”

 

“You don’t have to, Scott”, Albus gritted his teeth in frustration at the situation. “You don’t have to compete with anyone, you’ve got me, you have me, and you don’t have to fight over me with anyone. I really like you, I really like what we’ve got going here, and I’m not squandering that because of that conversation I’ve just had with Scorpius. If he gets to be happy with Rose, I get to be happy with you -“

 

“There it is again, Al!” Scott shook his head, his palm still attached to his face. “You’re comparing yourself to him again, it’s like everything is to get back at him! I can’t be with you if it’s going to be like that, Al!”

 

“You…you want to end it because of that one conversation?” Albus’s voice grew smaller as the situation grew more real. “Please…please don’t do that, we don’t deserve that -“

 

“But how do I know you’ve moved on?”

 

“Scorp…Scorp asked me to clarify my feelings for him once and for all, and I had this opportunity to set the whole thing straight, tell him exactly how I felt for him and how I had wanted it to be me and not Rose that he had chosen…but then I thought about how far I had come, how well our relationship has been going…how I felt about you, Scott…and I couldn’t bring myself to do it…I really really like you, Scott…”

 

“I really really like you too, Al”, Scott repeated as he stepped closer, taking Albus’s hands as they locked gazes. “I just…I just can’t be a chess piece in yours and Scorpius’s chess match”.

 

“You’re not”,  Albus leant forward and pressed the lightest of kisses on Scott’s lips, Scott visibly relaxing as they pulled apart again. “In fact…would you…um…we’ve been going out for three months…three months that I’ve really really enjoyed, that I wouldn’t replace for the world…I’ve never felt so safe in and out my own skin than when I’m with you…I feel like I can be who I want to be rather than just stay away from people like I did with Scorpius. I want to show you that I take us seriously, that I want you to stick around as long as you want me. So, like, would you maybe wanna be my…boyfriend?” ‘Boyfriend’ felt strange on Albus’s tongue, and he surprised himself with his own confidence as he saw Scott’s eyebrows lift slowly in soft shock. The silence that grew, however, disconcerted Albus more and more. “If it’s too serious or too soon, I’d totally understand, y’know, because I’m happy with what we have now if that’s what you want -“

 

“I trust you, Al”, Scott’s features spread outwards into the most natural grin Albus thought he had ever seen. “And I want this too, this next step, so…yeah, I’ll be your boyfriend…as long as you’ll be mine? Because that’s kinda non-negotiable”.

 

“Deal”, Albus laughed, and they shook hands as they laughed and kissed tenderly on the steps of the Slytherin dungeons, the light from the sun’s strongest rays penetrating the lakebed, shining a warm hazy glow through the staircase’s long windows and onto two sixteen-year-old boys making the most of the final blissful hours of term. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, I'm overwhelmed by the response I've been getting from you guys! Thanks so much for all the kind words, I love hearing from you guys and what you think might be happening with the boys. Thanks to all those who were appreciating the OCs as well - I'm so proud of my babies! Please do let me know what you think of this chapter, and thanks to all of those who give Kudos and comment and read my work! Thanks, guys! :)


	5. Fifth Degree (Part I): Commitment

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Al and Scott are happy that summer's over. Hogwarts hosts the Triwizard Tournament. Lily has more news for Al.

_"Fifth degree - Commitment: the witch or wizard must own the new parts of their life and vow to remain on their new track"._

 

***

 

_17th August 2022_

_Manhattan, New York_

 

_Dear Scott,_

 

_So, yeah, I really really hope you get this. I sent it by Muggle post all the way from New York and I’m not sure if twelve stamps are enough so I put fourteen on. Pretty sure I ended up spending ten dollars more than I needed because it now weighs like ten stone, but if it gets to you, I’ll be proud! How are you since we last spoke? How are you getting used to the Muggle world again? If I had to wash up my own dishes, I think I’d have maggots by about a week! But you are normally the clean one, so I trust you._

 

_I came third in the Interscholastic Wizard Chess Championship!!! I came like third in the whole fucking world; I think this is the third best moment of my life - second being the time I got to meet The Weird Sisters backstage when I was ten, first being the time I managed to get my bullshit scrunched up third year History of Magic essay into the wastepaper bin from one end of the dorm to the other. Honourable mention - the first/second/third/fourth/fifth/sixth/seventh/eighth/ninth/tenth/eleventh/twelfth/thirteenth/fourteenth/fifteenth etc time we kissed. Those were fun too._

 

_We went to MACUSA with Aunt Hermione, which was really interesting! It’s so big, the main chambers are absolutely huge! We met the American Vice President briefly, but he’s a bit of a dick - didn’t you read in the Quibbler that he was against Muggle/wizard marriages? Merlin’s beard, I wanted to hit him, but Aunt Hermione’s putdowns did the work for me. Aunt Hermione’s sass still only ranks as my seventh best moment of my life, though, right after the twenty-seventh time we kissed (remember? It was right after that dreadful Care of Magical Creatures O.W.L practical and you waited for me because your name is right before mine in the register and I was feeling pretty shitty because I kinda fancied going into that sort of thing after Hogwarts and then you cheered me up for a good solid twenty-five minutes. Still eternally grateful for that)._

 

_James has managed to get on the reserves for the Harpies, which made Mum cry for a rough estimate of three weeks. Dad was a pushover for two of them, which meant we had roasts all week and four Potter-Weasley-Granger hootenannies. I may have gotten closer to my family again, but fuck are they tiring! Would much rather have been sat educating you on wizard music instead of that Muggle rap shite you like!_

 

_Enclosed is one of those rap shite things on a CD from a muggle shop in New York- I have no idea what you do with the CD, but I remember you saying the name. I got told that no one bought CDs anymore, though - sorry if I fucked up!_

 

_How did the O.W.L.s go? Somehow scraped a couple of Os in Potions and Magical Creatures (literal fluke, I did total wank in that exam) and a few Es, but I’m most proud of that T I got in History of Magic - maybe even prouder than that essay bin moment but I haven’t had chance to revise the Top Ten of my life yet so the jury’s out._

 

 _Can’t wait to hear back from you soon! I’ve really missed you, y’know - if you maybe wanna talk to me /kiss me a few times_ ~~_every day_~~ _a week when we get back, I would thoroughly appreciate it. See, look I can be witty and debonair as you on paper!_

 

_Write soon!  
_

_Al_

 

***

 

_24th August 2022_

_Hastings, East Sussex_

 

_Al!_

 

_Ooh yes, your witty and debonair writing jumps off the page like a hyperactive kangaroo — how attractive. Thanks for rating our many, many kisses below disposing of your shitty essay. If you ever bin me off, at least I know you won’t miss the bin from across the room._

 

_Well done on your Muggle post adventures! It got here fine, if not for the fact that it almost took the letterbox off my front door entirely because it weighed like you sent me a small child. Thanks so much for the CD - luckily I haven’t ditched my ageing Muggle technology just yet! Surprised you didn’t try educating me…gives me the opportunity to educate you instead! (ask your Grandad Weasley for a CD player for the enclosed present to you!!)_

 

_We went to Spain on holiday — nothing fancy, just a sunbed, a swimming pool, some sunshine, my dad’s rusty Spanish… (oh God, my dad tried asking for a chicken salad and somehow ended up asking for a dick salad… don’t ask). If you’d like to compliment me on my extreme sunburn and generally shitty complexion and call me a Greek god from time to time, I’d be really quite grateful._

 

_I’m so looking forward to getting back to Hogwarts though. I legit spent about two hours in my first week back home wondering why the dishes weren’t being cleaned until they just sat there and started smelling. Somehow, I managed to think of you. I thought it was quite romantic._

 

_Oh, somewhat big news I forgot to mention - Mum knows about you, she’s chuffed! She really wants to meet you sometime, she says you sound like a ‘nice young man’, whatever that is. I think it sounds like I have competition. But at least she sounds happy about it! Next stop, Dad… He should be okay; it was probably easier for him to wrap his head around me being a wizard than me being gay, but it’s fine._

 

_Well done on those results, Al! Don’t tell me you just scraped anything, you’ve worked really hard for those Os! We didn’t kiss for a whole six hours once because you said you had to practise your Amortentia potion again (although you still haven’t told me what you smelt…)! I got enough results to do the N.E.W.T.s I need for Auror training, but I dunno if I want to do that now. I’ll still do them, but we’ll see what I want later. I was going to show off my D in Divination, but I feel outdone so we’ll have a low-key party following your T-in-History-of-Magic soiree._

 

_Can’t wait to get back to Hogwarts on the 1st! Me and Mum were thinking of going to Diagon Alley to pick up my stuff for sixth year on the 30th sometime in the afternoon. Send me an owl if you fancy coming with - I could so use your company right now, Al; my sister went out to her friends in Devon and it’s been lonely with just the fishpond for company. (Not that I compare you to a fishpond that often. If you were a fishpond, you’d be a king amongst fishponds, Al)._

 

_Hopefully, see you Tuesday - if not, I’ll come find you on 9 3/4!_

 

_See you soon!_

 

_Scott_

 

***

 

By the 28th August, Albus was able to recite Scott’s letter forwards, backwards, and in  Ancient Runes. _I could so use your company right now_. _I could so use your company right now._ Albus had already written his response accepting his invitation to Diagon Alley about five minutes after having received Scott’s owl, the sealed envelope sitting crisply under his underwear in the top drawer of the mahogany chest. Unsent. And it was beginning to kill.

 

He couldn’t help the knot in his stomach when he read it the first time. _Mum knows about you!_ Albus was pretty sure that Scott hadn't meant anything malicious getting in there first, but fucking hell Albus wished he hadn't gotten in there first. He hadn’t even thought about it, not properly anyway. He knew they’d have to know eventually. 

 

But was springing this on them for the best? Albus guessed he didn’t have to worry about producing a Potter heir if James’s virility lived up to its current potential. But would this be another disappointment? Would depriving Grandma Weasley of her seventy-fifth grandchild still be the end of the world? Albus guessed he could still have children. But what if he didn’t want any? What if he said he wanted them and it turned out he didn’t want to and they were even more disappointed after already having picked out baby suits in post-order catalogues? Would this ruin the Potter image? Albus figured that it couldn’t get any worse after the ‘Slytherin Squib’ incident…

 

That was it. He was going to tell his mother. Today. Now. Before he changed his mind. 

 

Albus got up from his bed with a start, the floorboards creaking in shock as he virtually stomped to the doorknob before he came to a stop once more. Is this what he wanted? To surrender the secret, to surrender the power of his own mystery and detachment? Did he really trust them to accept it? 

 

No no no. He had to tell his mother. 

 

He swung the door open, the door banging against the bookshelf with a thunderous statement of intent. Without even thinking about how to put one foot after the other, Albus bolted for the stairs, taking three at a time at one stage before leaping to the bottom with a thud. 

  
“Albus, what did I tell you about slamming your door like that?”, the sound of his mother’s voice filled Albus with equal parts dread and adrenaline. Changing tack entirely, he walked slowly, steps quiet as a mouse as he neared the open living area. He could hear his mother tinkering with the crockery cupboard and boiling water filling a teapot on the worktop. “Albus?”

 

“Yeah, sorry, Mum”, Albus muttered loudly, his mother appearing into view from behind the wooden pillars of the ground floor. 

 

“There’s something you want to tell me…?”, Albus rolled his eyes at his mother’s intuition, wondering how he was so easy to read yet he still didn’t feel like his parents properly understood him. She flicked her wand in the direction of the table with an extra teacup and saucer soaring from the cupboards as she sat down at the table. Albus shrugged unsurely in her direction, not able to look her in the eye as he took a seat next to her at the table.

 

_I’m going to tell her. I’m going to tell her. I’m going to tell her._

 

“Albus, you know you can tell me anything that’s on your mind”, his mother smiled gently as the enchanted teacup poured two cups of peppermint tea daintily around the table, before resting itself gently on the table inside the tea-cosy Grandma Weasley made for them as a moving-in present when Albus was little. “If you want, it’ll stay between you and me - the others can stay out of it for now”.

 

“It’s alright, James and Lily already know”, Albus mumbled, still not feeling altogether comfortable. “I…see…the thing is…I’m seeing someone and they’ve asked if I wanna do my Diagon Alley shopping with them on Tuesday and I need to get back to them to say if I can come or not”. 

 

“Well, of course you can”, his mother smiled, somewhat to herself it seemed. “You should’ve known we would have said yes. I just wonder why you didn’t tell us about him before?”

 

“Because you see…the thing is…the person I’m seeing is a gu-, hang on, did you say ‘him’?” If his mother hadn’t been thoroughly confusing in her demeanour before, Albus was really perplexed now. “How? How did you -? How on earth did you-?”

 

“I’m your mother, Albus, it’s my job to notice these things”, Albus scowled at his mother’s smugness, but inside, he felt the rockiness of the waves inside him subside, and he began to regain some sort of regular breathing pattern again. “We’ve known for ages - don’t ask me how. I guess it was just a mother’s intuition, Albus, we’re all born with one”.

 

“But what about Dad?” 

 

“He’s a big boy, he’s dealt with it”, his mother put her smooth hand on Albus’s. “I’ll tell him if you want?”

 

“Yeah”, Albus shrunk down a little, feeling a little puny for not being able to confront his father, as though he still might reject him despite his mother’s protests. “Maybe…after I’m back at Hogwarts, though?”

 

“Whatever you want, Al”, his mother thumbed the back of Albus’s hand again. “What’s his name?”

 

“Scott…Phillips, you wouldn’t know him…”

 

“Oh, like the wizard explorer Percival?” his mother’s eyes widened in awe. “I used to read about him when I was your age, he was incredible!” _Wow, the wizarding world is really that small…_

 

“Yeah…something like that”, Albus coughed nervously. “He got invited to the Slug Club dinner I got invited to because of it”.

 

His mother’s eyes grew wide amidst a clattering of china and tea. “You got invited to a Slug Club dinner and you didn’t tell us? I thought things were getting better between us?”

  
Albus didn’t know particularly why he hadn’t mentioned it; he’d spent so much time chasing the coattails of his siblings that, honestly, he had shocked himself when he hadn’t spread the news - especially, he had finally achieved something worth reporting at the Weasley-Potter-Granger Christmas dinner. It wasn’t that he wasn’t excited or didn’t understand the importance. But something made him embarrassed about it and he couldn’t put his finger on the reason for the slow burn that seared through his skin. “I didn’t think it was that big a deal, I guess”.

 

“It’s a huge deal, Al!” his mother sighed. “Your dad and I both got in and people still ask us about it nowadays, it shows that you’ve got something special inside you. What did Slughorn invite you for?”

 

“He…he noticed my Draught of Living Death one time and wanted to get to know me better...and then he realised I was first seed of the international chess team and he'd almost stopped breathing by that point...”

 

“That’s excellent, Al”, Albus almost fell off his chair when his mother leapt from her own and took him into her arms, the comforting childhood smell of her perfume lulling him once the surprise of her embrace had worn off a little. “You’ll tell us next time, yeah?”  
  
“Yeah”, he mumbled, not entirely sure he meant it. “I will”.

 

“Good”, his mother patted him on the shoulder and went to stand as she took her empty cup and saucer. “Go send that envelope I saw in your underwear draw to Scott, then, I’m sure he’s eager to hear back from you”.

 

“I will”, Albus nodded, sipping his tea cautiously, not totally sure of its temperature. Suddenly, the temperature didn’t matter when he realised his mother he had seen the envelope. “Hey, stop looking in my underwear drawer!”

 

“Well, stop making me do your washing!”

 

Albus rolled his eyes and downed the rest of his tea, sure now that he wasn’t going to melt the sides of his throat. Pulling his chair back, he brought his own cup and saucer over to the sink, feeling faint embarrassment wash over him once more as he mumbled, “Thanks for being so understanding, Mum”.

 

“S’alright, Al”, his mother flashed a quick glance of kindness back as she ran the cup under the cold tap. Albus turned to leave the kitchen to send the letter, but he stopped when one final awkward question from his mother rang through the wooden panels of the room. “How’s Scorpius been doing lately?”

 

“Um, fine, I guess”, Albus scratched the back of his head, unsure of what he wanted his mother to know. “Why?”

 

“I don’t know”, she shrugged, flicking the crockery back into its place in the cupboards with a quick flick of her wand. “It’s just that you don’t mention him much anymore, I was wondering if you two were still friends. You used to be so close”.

 

“He’s busy with Rose, and I have Scott and my other friends now”, he shrugged back, avoiding his mother’s laser-like gaze. “I guess that’s what time does to people”.

 

“Well, as long as that makes you happy”, his mother replied; Albus tried to glean what she meant behind her neutral response, but he found nothing. “Go send that letter before it’s too late! You’ll have to run to the Owl Office, our owls are out”. 

 

Albus nodded in acknowledgement and turned on his heel, sprinting back up the stairs in a bundle of thuds as soon as it was safe to look uncool enough to run to send something to his boyfriend without his mother realising. Reaching his room at the end of the corridor, he slowed down, his mother’s words about the Slug Club echoing in his mind like voices in a cave. It wasn’t like his family asked about his life much before he had managed to land a boyfriend and get a Slug Club invite and win bronze in the pinnacle of school chess. Albus found it difficult to believe that they would be shocked that he wouldn’t tell them something when he had never actually been asked if anything had happened in the first place. 

 

He turned the doorknob to his room, the latch permitting his entrance with a soft click in and out of place. Instead of rushing over to his chest of drawers to send his letter to Scott, he sat down on the bed, the mattress giving that familiar sag which brought him back into his own head. Maybe his parents hadn’t changed as much as Albus had thought; he couldn’t fault them for himself not having actually told them anything, but he found it curious that they hadn’t expected him to actually do anything of note, and therefore didn’t actually see it any use to ask him. If Albus was being honest, he had thought that they might have heard it from James or Lily. 

 

All over again, he felt the weight of pressure from his parents’ expectations of their family press against his shoulder like anvils, as though he was late to the party and his family were waiting for him to cross the finish line, far in the distance. His chest tensed as he felt the waves of disappointment lap at him like sewage in a drainpipe, as though doing exciting things like Slug Club dinners was the only way Albus could ever find acceptance inside his family of greats and overachievers. He couldn’t simply just help people, or have a nice boyfriend, or be happy. Becoming a Potions master would simply have to do, it seemed. 

 

Scorpius would understand how Albus was feeling right now. 

 

Albus’s eyes flickered over to the roll of parchment sitting on his desk overlooking the garden, left over from his quick letter to Matthew a couple of days ago. He felt his hands itch as though leading Albus back to his old friend, back to the solace of having another person in his life who knew how heavy the family name weighed against him. With the shortest of decisive breaths, he crossed the room and pulled his desk chair lightly, taking a seat on the old comforting leather. He picked up the quill that lazed idly in its ink, the plumage tickling the back of Albus’s hand as he gripped it in his hand. Laying the roll of parchment out flat, he took the nib of the quill to the paper, the tip teasing the parchment as Albus thought of what to say. 

 

_Dear Scorpius,_

 

Albus stopped and looked over to the drawer with his finished letter to Scott in it. He didn’t know if Scorpius wanted this sort of correspondence again, even if he looked genuinely upset that their relationship had soured so much. If anything, Albus wasn’t even sure if he was ready to resume that sort of relationship again; he felt as though he didn’t even know Scorpius anymore, as though he had become totally unrecognisable when he was hanging around with Rose. 

 

With a decisive strikethrough of the two lonely words on the page, Albus opened the drawer of his desk and shoved the parchment in roughly, ends folding up in a dog-ear epidemic. Pushing the chair back, he slipped some shoes on, took Scott’s letter out of the underwear drawer and raced off to the Owl Office before it closed. 

 

***

 

The tired leather of the Hogwarts Express train compartment felt especially cosy this year to Albus, who was fondly brushing his palm over the smooth material as he waited to set off. He was supposed to have met Scott on Platform 9 3/4 before getting on the train, but the conductor was rushing nervous sons and daughters onto the train and he had felt obliged to get on as well. Now the choking sense of worry had him by the throat - what if Scott thought he didn't want to see him anymore? What if Scott is still on the platform when the train leaves? Oh shit, oh shit...

 

“Albus!” 

 

Albus brought himself out of his leather seat appreciation to Matthew, Daphne, and Ellie’s smiling faces as they trailed their trunks behind. “Guys, it’s good to see you!” It certainly felt a lot better seeing them than his company last year…

 

“You’re not keeping this whole compartment warm for Scott, right?” Daphne faked disgust with a scrunch of her face.

 

“No, no, come in”, Albus breathed with a nervous laugh, still worried that Scott was still on the platform and about to miss the train. “You guys haven’t seen Scott on the train, have you?”

 

“Wow, twelve seconds, that’s a record!” Ellie rolled her eyes. 

 

“Yeah, he’s down the carriage with his sister”, Matthew explained, throwing a withering look Ellie’s way. “He asked after you, though, wondered why you weren’t on the platform. He said he was gonna look for you in a bit”.

 

“Oh, okay”, Albus let himself overthink about that information for about five seconds longer than necessary before shaking himself and moving his trunk to the rack above his seat to make space. “Get in, you lot!”

 

His friends murmured their thanks as they slotted their bags under the seats and on the racks, lounging on the leather as they slung their rucksacks and book bags by their feet, and chatting as they got comfortable. Albus felt strangely contented with the unfolding cosiness which surrounded him; his own achievements, the achievements that he hadn’t even recognised as achievements, held him close to their chests for a moment, as though cherishing a small baby in their arms. This felt so much more real than a Slug Club dinner. 

 

“Are you guys going to go for the Triwizard Tournament this year?” Daphne fiddled with her long blonde curls as she tucked into a Chocolate Frog she’d bought off the platform and an old copy of _The Quibbler_. “It’s going to be the first one since that awful one in ’94, but they said they wanted to try and get foster some sort of international community again, what with what's going on in the Muggle world at the moment…”

 

“I was, y’know, thinking of putting my name in the Goblet of Fire…”, Matthew coughed shyly, sending Ellie into a fit of giggles. “What? What’s so funny about that?”

 

“Nothing, nothing, I swear nothing, Matt”, Ellie almost choked on her own humour. “Do you not remember how you reacted when that baby dragon in fourth year breathed fire on your robes?”

“Oh yeah, you spent about five minutes rolling around in the hay because you didn’t believe us when we said the fire was out”, Daphne chuckled, looking up from her quiz (WHAT SORT OF HIPPOGRIFF ARE YOU?). 

 

“And?” Matthew raised his eyebrows. “Am I not allowed to have grown into a serious contender over the last year and a half?”

 

“Of course you are!” Daphne and Ellie cooed and laughed. 

 

“Yeah”, Albus smirked. “We’ll let that time at the end of last year slide when we heard you shrieking from the bathroom because the shower had turned on by itself…”

 

“That happened?!” Daphne’s eyebrows couldn’t get any higher. “You kept that under your cloak for three months, Al?”

 

“I was waiting for this specific conversation to unleash it!”

 

“Unleash what, Al?” Lily drew the sliding door open, Kaitlyn Pewsey and Emma Appleton in tow. “You shouldn’t be flirting now you’re officially off the shelf!”

 

“Har har har”, Albus tutted as he shifted across the seat. “You staying?”

 

“As long as we don’t become the audience of _Late with Scott and Albus_ , I think we’ll stick around”, Lily looked back to her friends who nodded a little too enthusiastically, trailing their belongings behind them before stacking them on the racks. “Where is Scott anyway, I thought you were meeting on the platform?”

“We were”, Albus felt his face fall slightly. “I had to rush on the train because the conductor was getting ready to set the train off. I didn’t want to be that guy who has to Floo to Hogsmeade and look like a total knob”.

 

“So you left Scott to look like a knob on his own?” Lily smirked.

 

“Well now I feel perfect, sis’”, Albus twiddled his thumbs, feeling more and more worried about how Scott had taken it the more they spoke about it. “Thanks for your undying support”.

 

“Hey, he said he’s coming, Al”, Daphne’s voice rose from behind the paper. “Give him a little bit of faith, he’s so into you”.

 

“Should I be worried?”

 

The worry tumbled off of Albus’s shoulders in a sort of flow of pyroclastic passion, the calmness of Scott’s presence in relation to his buzzing thoughts juxtaposed with the intensity of an elongated honeymoon phase and three months with no lip contact at all. However, despite Albus’s fidgeting and excitement, meeting Scott two days before worked a charm on Albus. He suddenly felt the pressure building from his conversation with his mother coupled with the almost-letter Albus nearly sent to Scorpius lift off his shoulders, even if he had been pretty nervous meeting Mrs Phillips for the first time. She had been lovely about the whole thing and even took the two of them to Fabian Fortescue’s Ice Cream Parlour after the two of them had picked up all their books. But there had been no lip action, and certainly no tongue action; maybe after that, Albus might be able to relax a little more. 

 

“No, no”, Albus wheezed in a sigh of relief. “I’m sorry I didn’t meet you on the platform, I got hurried on by the conductor”.

 

“It’s fine”, Scott blushed slightly from the attention he was receiving. “As long as there’s enough room to squeeze in next to you, of course?”

 

“Ooh”, the girls all cooed again and Scott flipped a V-sign as he threw his belongings up on the rack and sat on Albus’s lap, leaning against the wall of the compartment.

 

“What were you guys talking about before I became the centre of attention?” Scott asked once the excitement from Albus and Scott’s general proximity finally calmed down, taking Albus’s hand underneath his palm and squeezing it softly. Albus felt himself zone out as he tuned out of the babbling conversation and into the light sensation Scott’s hand gave him, a stray thumb of Scott making small circles on the back of Albus’s hand. Albus sighed; it was probably the safest and most loved that Albus had ever felt. Of course, he couldn't be sure about the L-word for sure, but he delighted in the perfection that their two hands enjoyed, how each nook and cranny of their two entwined hands seemed to fit like long-separated jigsaw pieces. It made Albus feel heady from the tenderness and simple affection that Scott was happy to show in front of everyone, that showed the world that Albus deserved to be loved, could be loved, that a person wanted to be with him and love him. Naturally, he felt just the same way back; Albus recoiled at the thought of him just using Scott to make him feel more loveable. But Albus finally felt as though he didn’t have to try so hard anymore to seem cool and interesting when someone found him so publicly cool and interesting that they would want to call him their boyfriend. He let himself get high off the fumes of their closeness, tipping his head back against the headboards of the seats, watching excited first years run through the corridor of the carriage, meeting people, making mistakes, feeling lonely. Albus wished he could go back to the eleven-year-old boy who took the whole journey alone six years ago and tell him that he would get to this moment and that it would all get better. He still couldn’t quite believe that it was happening. Albus liked it like that. 

 

A flash of blond caught Albus’s eye, causing his lazily squinted eyes to open slightly. The flash was unmistakable, the argument equally as obvious as a tumble of brown locks followed in a shrill quiver. Albus strained his ears, a flash of guilt being tempered by the draw of curiosity through the thin glass of the compartment. 

 

“-bus this, Albus that, do you think I ever actually want to hear my own name for a change?!”

 

“I do, you just seem so intent on focussing on me saying things that offend you that -“

 

“They don’t offend me, they just make me see that you’re more obsessed with Albus that you ever could be with me!”

 

“Rose!” the brown locks disappeared in a tornado of twirls, and the blond hair catapulted itself forwards down the corridor in pursuit. “ _Rose!_ ”

 

Albus looked up, matching Scott’s slightly concerned gaze with his own. Albus lifted their entwined hands and brought the back of Scott’s slightly hirsute hand to his face, brushing his lips lightly as a feather against the skin. Scott flashed the smallest of smiles and a blink of gratitude, and Albus leant back against the veneer of the seat, one eye on the emotional vacuum left beyond the sliding doors. 

 

***

 

“Albus! Albus! _Albus!_ For fuck’s sake, Albus, this is the most important day of my life and you’re not even awake!” 

 

Albus blinked the sleep that filled his eyes in shut like concrete. “You’ve got the first task of the Triwizard Tournament today, you’re not about to get married or see your first born child walk”.

 

“Who knows if any of that’s going to happen, Al!” Albus started flinching as plump cushions started hurtling towards his face at break-neck speed. “This is the biggest moment of my life _so far_! You said you’d support me in this, you said you’d train me!”

 

“That was before your name came hurtling out the Goblet of Fire!” 

 

“From this moment, you’ll be known as Albus the Cowardice Bastard -“

 

“Fine, Matt, fine”, Albus lifted his head into the dull glow of the light that filtered through the Great Lake and into the windows of the Slytherin dormitories. Immediately, Albus’s tired grouchiness was lifted by the sight of Matt practically ransacking the whole room, trying to prepare himself with the most practical clothes before the first task. Thankfully the rest of the beds were left unoccupied; Pascal and Jeffries had gone home for the weekend (“unpatriotic spoilsports!”, Ellie had scoffed when Albus had told her), and Scorpius’s sheets were as made and untouched as ever. 

 

“‘Prepare to be charming’”, Matthew whispered, turning his wand in his hand slowly in his head, his concentration deafening Albus from across the other side of the room. 

 

“I am incredibly charming, thanks”, Albus mumbled tiredly as he put his hand through his hair and found his slippers by his bed. 

 

“No!” Albus got another cushion straight in the face this time. “It’s what the clue was. I mean, I’m guessing we have to cast some charms, but for what? At whom? Will I have to do physical shit? Do I need kneepads, Albus?”

 

“Whatever makes you feel prepared, Matt”, Albus reached around for his dressing gown, slipping it carefully around his shoulders before tying the band around his waist. “Matt?”

 

“Yeah?” Matthew didn’t look up from digging around in the excesses of his trunk but relaxed into Albus’s grasp to his shoulder.

 

“I know we’ve been taking the piss out of you since the train”, Albus scratched his nose, the seriousness of the situation making him feel a little silly. “But we’re all behind you, the school is behind you, whether you win or lose. Go and have some fun, yeah?”

 

Matthew looked up at Albus and his lined face softened slightly at Albus’s sincerity. “Thanks, mate”, Matthew’s mouth went crooked at the edge, and he went to stand. “I really appreciate everything”. 

 

“No problem”, Albus dipped his head shyly, feeling ever so slightly choked. He hadn’t experienced the feeling before of deep caring about a guy without actually wanting to also kiss them for a long time afterwards. Platonic male friendship felt refreshing, he decided. Albus nodded one more time with the breathiest of laughs, before turning around and heading for the shower. 

 

—-

 

For some reason, the rickety steps that lined the seats of the Quidditch stadium filled Albus’s chest with the faintest whiff of nostalgia. Not that he particularly had any attachment to the sport itself, but he swelled with his memories of cheering for Lily and James or Scott’s sister with his boyfriend by his side, cosying up in scarves and hot chocolate, his pride glowing for his siblings and his friends scoring goals and catching snitches. He almost felt proud when Gryffindor won the Quidditch Cup the previous year, much to his friends’ and Scott’s disgust. 

 

“Did you bring the flask? Tell me you brought the flask, Scott”, Albus gritted his teeth against the bracing wind as they shimmied across the row, claiming seats right at the front of the stand overlooking the vast temporary stage with the task laid out across the vast green space below. “That’s some damn fine pumpkin soup we’d be missing out on”. 

 

“Yes, dear”, came the bored but amused reply two steps behind. “Did you bring the popcorn and the Bertie Bott’s?”

 

Busted. “Oh fuck…”

 

“Now who’s unreliable?” Albus found Scott’s tongue-in-cheek expression adorably sickening. “Good job I brought a Honeydukes pick-n-mix then”.

 

“Oh my God, Scott, did I ever mention that I love y-Honeydukes pick-n-mixes?” Albus’s palm would have met his face repeatedly had he not passably gotten away with such a slip of the tongue. It wasn’t time for that yet. 

 

“Yeah”, Albus thought he had caught the faintest flicker of a smile grace Scott’s features upon his misspeak, but it was gone before he caught it properly. “You did tell me once or twice. What do you reckon the task is?”

 

“‘Prepare to be charming’, apparently”, Albus shrugged. “Matt’s being trying to think of what it means all month, but he’s none the wiser”.

 

“Oh God, how is he?” Scott rummaged around in the huge bag on their lap. “He must be regretting going for it now?”

 

“We’ve had a couple of wobbles, but y’know, I think he’s going to be alright. Seems like he’s thought about a lot more than that Durmstrang bastard; the most he seems to have done is break the hearts of pretty much every seventh-year dorm in Hogwarts, male and female”.

 

“Ah, but he does have muscles”, Scott tipped his head with a pout. “That has to account for something”.

 

“No, it doesn- have you been watching his muscles the whole time?” Albus didn’t enjoy the jealousy that burned in his throat. 

 

“And so what if I have?” Scott’s pout turned into a smirk as Albus felt himself becoming visibly redder. “Does that pose a problem for you?”

 

“What about my muscles? Are they not noticeable?”

 

“Oh yes, very beefy”, Albus couldn’t stifle a grin when Scott grabbed hold of his arms with a gentle squeeze and a kiss on his cheek. “Al?”

 

“Yeah?” Albus turned his head to look at Scott, who had assumed a somewhat more earnest expression as he softly thumbed Albus’s arm.

 

“Al, I-“

 

“Al, Al! There you are!” The girls were here, waving from behind them as they climbed down the steps to their seats.

 

“Ellie, Daphne!” Albus waved back, mouthing a sorry to Scott, who sighed and took another rummage round the pick-n-mix bag. “We saved you guys seats!”

 

“I can’t believe this day’s actually come and we’re watching him do it”, Daphne called when she had shimmied through the rows of people to the empty wooden seats next to Albus. “Have to say, I’m feeling a little bit of motherly pride”.

 

“I knew he could do it”, Albus smiled, smirking a little himself when he felt Scott’s thigh tense beside him. He put a stray hand on Scott’s tense thigh and smiled again when it relaxed at once. “He’s a panicker, but he wanted this, you could see it in his eyes. And when he kept kicking in his sleep”. 

 

The girls giggled again and Scott gave a small chuckle of appreciation before the foursome flinched collectively as the megaphones screeched into life around the ground. 

 

“Witches, wizards, mesdames et messieurs”, Albus found Headmistress McGonagall’s tight Scottish titter strangely soothing and reassuring as her voice boomed across the grounds. “It gives me great pleasure to announce the opening of the first task of the 126th Triwizard Tournament of 2022-23!” The stadium erupted in a roar of applause and cheering of a plethora of languages, and Albus felt even slightly choked by the pride he felt for Matt and his school. “Before we present to you our three champions, let us remind you that we compete as three schools, but as one wizarding community. We shall not tolerate unsportsmanlike behaviour of any sort, and we will encourage cooperation and friendship between our schools to build the European wizarding community of the future. We must also remember the great risks that our champions have decided to undertake by representing their schools in this tournament; the risks are high, but the rewards are higher. So make sure to get behind our champions and give them your full support. Now, without further ado, I present to you all our champions; first of all, from the Beauxbatons Academy of Magic, I present our first champion: Miss Amélie Du Bois!”

 

A slender young woman with blonde hair walked purposefully from behind the curtains across into the middle of the smaller stage in front of the empty larger stage behind it. With a courtesy to Headmistress McGonagall, she waved with a look of sheer determination at the frantically cheering Beauxbatons support from the stand across from Albus. 

 

“Bonne chance indeed to our first champion”, McGonagall cleared her throat as she brought the audience back to silence. “And now onto our second champion from the Durmstrang Academy - please give a round of applause to Mr Andreas Tysk!”

 

A very burly young man strolled across the stage, muscles clearly showing through the tight white under-robes he was wearing for the occasion to the insatiable reaction of the entire crowd. Albus pouted his lips in his best duck face, tutting very audibly as he heard Scott give a wolf-whistle entirely for Albus’s benefit. 

 

“And finally”, McGonagall’s shrill voice was drowned out by continued appreciation for Andreas. “ _And finally!”_ The crowd fell into a slightly intimidated silence as McGonagall’s shriek still echoed into the Forbidden Forest. “And finally, let me introduce to you our third and final champion, from our very own Slytherin house in this Hogwarts School. Please show your appreciation for Matthew Dell!”

 

The roars of the crowd were truly deafening, and Albus couldn’t help grinning as he saw Matthew pad nervously from behind the curtains before giving a small wave up to Albus and his friends. The Hogwarts crowds were packed with Slytherin banners and Hogwarts flags all bouncing through the wind like rabbits, all teaming with excitement and anticipation for what the next few hours would bring. 

 

“Okay, okay, that’s quite enough”, McGonagall waved down the cheers once more with an authoritative flick of her hand. “Champions, the first task is as follows. In a moment, the stage will transform into a pyramid of ten levels, each with an obstacle blocking each level. Simply remove the obstacle from the gate to proceed. The task shall end when the champions have received the scrolls at the top of the pyramid or have pulled out of the competition. And don’t forget - prepare to be charming! On your marks, get set…”, the whole stadium turned deathly silent for the most delicious of moments, “…GO!”

 

With a flick of her wand, McGonagall transformed the stage into a large pyramid made of bushes and Aztec-style stone. Albus got the binoculars from his bag, getting a glimpse of Matthew confronted with a large Hogwarts gargoyle blocking the gate to the second level. After a moment’s hesitation lasting somewhere between two and five years, he saw Matthew chant some sort of incantation and the gargoyle collapsed into a pool of sand, Matthew quickly unlocking the gate to the second level with a determined point of his wand. They were in business. 

 

***

 

 _Shit, shit, shit, late, late, late_. 

 

Albus picked up whichever pile of papers he thought that the relevant work would be and launched himself towards the dormitory door and down the stairs to the common room. He knew every second that he kept Lily waiting was a second she was counting so that Albus ‘owed’ her for some sort of favour (usually either to do with a boy or finishing an essay). 

 

The grounds were looking resplendent in their Christmas garnish, but Albus barely saw a blur of red, green, and gold as he practically skated on the soles of his grip-less shoes through the freshly waxed floor of the first-floor corridor. He almost threw himself at the library front door, papers exploding across the floor in a fit of panic. 

 

“Shit!” Albus hissed, rolls of parchment just escaping his grasp as two third-years ran blissfully through the melee. He knelt down, partly to catch his breath, partly to scrabble around the ground for the loose bits of paper that clung obstinately to the marble floor. Albus vaguely heard the library door swing open, but his panic-turned-embarrassment prevented him from noticing the person who had bent down to join him on the floor. It was a stray hand that wasn’t attached to Albus’s shorter, stubbier fingers, rather to longer ones with perfectly formed cuticles. 

 

“Here”, came the murmur from above Albus’s head, whispering like a calm breeze. Albus recognised it immediately, feeling his head become immobile without considerable force. Eventually, he swung his head upwards, unable to conceal his sad grimace as he showed his face to his hero. Scorpius handed the books and parchment back to him as Albus got back to his feet, matching Albus’s grimace with a pretty decent imitation. “You…you seem rushed”.

 

“Oh”, was all Albus could get out for about five seconds, suddenly feeling the closeness of the walls he had built around himself to protect him months ago from the vulnerability that came with being in love with Scorpius Malfoy. “It’s nothing, I’m just late for meeting Lily and you know what she’s like about lateness…”. 

 

“You sure that’s it?” Scorpius asked slowly, looking careful not to want to ask anything too personal if their distance didn’t allow for it. “You look stressed out”. 

 

“It’s…it’s…” Albus cast his mind back to that conversation with his mother before term had begun, and then the letter he had received earlier that week from his parents congratulating him on his chess team win against Durmstrang in the Triwizard Chess Tournament and his recent relationship news, stating that Scott was more than welcome for Christmas if he could get away. He knew Scorpius would understand. “It’s fine, I promise”.

 

“Okay”, Scorpius looked away for a moment, and Albus had the faintest feeling that he had betrayed him. “Okay, then…see you, then…”. Scorpius shot him one last sad smile as he turned his head, Albus reciprocating until Albus had disappeared down the end of the first-floor corridor. With the largest exhale of his life, Albus opened the door and tread lightly through the enormously high bookshelves, winding his way past a particularly intimidating-looking Madam Pince and towards the desks right at the back. Eventually, he saw the thick red plumage of hair that betrayed Lily’s presence behind a stack of fifth-year potions books and a frantically quivering quill. 

 

“Psst”, Albus hissed under his breath. “Sorry, I’m so late…”

 

“You said you’d be here twenty minutes ago”, Lily raised her eyebrows quizzically. “What kept you?”

 

“Huh…”, Albus sighed. “Nothing”.

 

Lily licked her top lip for a moment and rested her quill in its holder. “It doesn’t look like nothing to me”.

 

“It is, Lily, please, stop it”.

 

“Okay, that’s it”, Lily huffed. “It has to be something big, then”.

 

“Who said that?”

 

“Me, I said that”, Lily started dismantling her fort of books to get a better look at Albus. “Is it Scott?”

 

“No, not at all”, Albus started unpacking his own books. It really wasn’t Scott; if anything, Albus wasn’t sure it could get any better between him and his boyfriend. They were spending a lot of time together, but not so much that Albus was finding that he wasn’t doing his own thing. They were balancing things well, with school work, Albus’s chess team, Scott’s prefect duty, and all their friends. Albus really didn’t know where he had found the ability to delegate his time so well, and he certainly wasn’t counting his Nifflers before he’d found his treasure. But if anything had been up, it certainly wasn’t his relationship. “Really, I don’t want to get into it”.

 

Lily ignored him entirely. “Is it Scorpius? Things really haven’t been going at all well for him and Rose since…y’know, the train…”

 

“Really?” Albus tried his best to sound as absent as possible, unfurling his parchment and holding down the curling end with his ink blotter. 

 

“Don’t bullshit me, Albus”, Lily poked him with the nib of her quill, causing Albus to recoil and almost send his books crashing to the ground again. “I know you still really care about him, even if you have gotten over him like you say”.

 

“I guess”, Albus exhaled in resignation. “Y’know, I…I bumped into him just now, by the library door in the corridor”. Lily leant forward over her essay as she craned her ears to listen. “I’d dropped all my books because I slipped into the door, and he helped me pick it all back up again. He looked pretty sullen then, to be honest”.

 

“Last word on the grapevine was that they’re this close-“, Lily brought her finger and thumb to her eye in a tight squeeze. “-to breaking up. From all the noises in the Gryffindor common room, it’s all about you, Albus”.

 

“Even I’m not that much of an egomaniac to think that’s true, Lily”, Albus scoffed, although he felt a flash of uncomfortable pride wash over himself for a reason he wasn’t too sure of. “They probably have their own problems just like other relationships”.

 

“This is that problem”, Lily raised her eyebrows. “The problem’s you, Albus; without you even talking to them, you still have a presence in Scorpius’s life. He keeps mentioning you absent-mindedly, telling the same anecdotes about the adventures you two had, sometimes how he misses it. I’ve heard it myself, Al”, Lily shrugged at Albus’s incredulous expression, “I’ve heard it from the dorm walls - they shout loudly enough”. 

 

“Scorpius was never one to shout before they got together”, Albus said, half to himself. “I hate that this relationship has changed him so much”. 

 

“You have to tell him this”, Lily pressed, and Albus found himself inexplicably rolling his eyes and looking back to his desk. “You two had such a great thing before him and Rose got together…don’t you think that’s too valuable to lose forever?”

 

“It was Scorpius’s decision to ditch me, Lily”, Albus pointed out, even if he thought it wasn’t an entirely fair analysis when he had hidden to get over the blond-haired bombshell. “He wanted to spend more time with his new beau than he wanted to spend with me, no matter how hard he tried to split his time evenly. So I had to compensate for that; it wasn’t fair for me to just spend all that time pining and worrying and silently praying for a breakup until it actually happened. I had to get my own life back together”. 

 

“Which you’ve done, you’ve done great”, Lily smiled. “You’ve got a boyfriend, you do things except studying and sleeping, you have great friendships, you’ve got me and James -“

 

“I’m glad you actually see what matters”, Albus muttered to himself, instantly regretting it when he began to write the date at the top of his Potions essay with an angry stab. 

 

“What does that mean?” Lily’s voice grew smaller as if she sensed Albus was angry with her. 

 

“It’s nothing, Lil’”, Albus looked up briefly. “Seriously, I’m not mad at you”.

 

“You’re mad at someone”, those eyebrows rose for a third time. “Is…is this what’s really bothering you?”

 

Albus closed his eyes. He felt the feelings he had bottled up so well around Scott come knocking at the corners of his mouth, desperate for air. “Mum and Dad sent a letter on Tuesday”.

 

“Oh, Albus -“

 

“Let me finish, yeah?” Lily scrunched up her mouth in protest for a moment before offering a resigned nod. “They said how proud they were of winning the Triwizard Chess Tournament, and how proud they were of me and Scott, and extended an invitation to him for Christmas”.

 

“And…this is a bad thi- sorry, I’ll let you finish”, Lily clasped her hand over her mouth. 

 

“I guess that in itself isn’t…”, Albus thought hard about how he was going to word the next bit, knowing wording it wrong might send the wrong message. “It’s just that…before I actually started doing things of note here…I never used to get letters like this, they just didn’t ask before…it was the same when…when I came out to Mum before term started and told her about Scott -“

 

“You told her about Scott?! Sorry!” Two seventh-years flashed the most evil of glares in Lily’s direction.

 

“Yeah, I told her about Scott, and somehow we managed to get onto the topic of that Slug Club dinner I had with Scott back in fifth year, and Mum was pretty offended that I had never told them. Thing is, they never asked if I had done anything interesting before because normally they didn’t ask anything at all; they expected me just to have an average term where I did nothing apart from hanging out with Scorpius. It was like Mum and Dad see these as my most important achievements, not the fact that I got over Scorpius, found myself with a guy I really really like, am doing better at my studies, and finally feel as though I belong in this place. Why can’t that be enough for them? How can they not know how big a deal that is for me?”

 

“I…”, Lily opened her mouth to respond but shut it again and reached out for Albus’s hand. “I really don’t think they mean it like that…to me, they feel as though you’d rather they didn’t know about your life, and they think that you don’t need them fussing over what they think are little details. I do know what you mean, though…Dad’s not the most approachable person in the world on a good day…”

 

“I just don’t know how to get the message across without burning all the bridges we’ve built over the past couple of years”, Albus sunk back in the soft long-armed chair. “I finally feel accepted by my parents again, I don’t feel like quite a disappointment anymore…but something’s just not right…”

 

“Well nothing’s going to change if you don’t make it happen, Albus”, Lily chewed the tip of her quill, spitting out the feathers in a sneeze. “But promise me one thing, Albus?”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Please…please do it after Christmas Day?” Lily looked guiltily at her parchment. “I know this is selfishness of the highest order…but I had only just gotten used to us all being together again and…it’s been ages since we had a Christmas where one of us isn’t about to hit someone…please, Al?”

 

“‘Kay”, Albus shrugged, eyes wide when a bundle of little sister came hurtling around the table, almost knocking Albus from his seat. 

 

“I love you, big bro’”.

 

“Love you too”, Albus held out his arms hesitantly before resting them on his sisters back, feeling the pressure wheeze softly out of his stuffed head as he rocked her. 

 

“Now, tell me about Matt!” Lily practically sprinted back to her seat, suddenly seeming full of energy. “How’s he doing after the first challenge?”

 

“He’s busy figuring out what the scroll means”, Albus laughed. “There’s been at least two all-nighters already. I think he’s just shocked he came a close second to Du Bois, he reckons he’s in the running”.

 

“But-“ Lily got interrupted by the all-seeing glare of Madam Pince, who had marched up to their desk completely undetected by Lily’s excitement. “Sorry”.

 

***

 

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Albus patted Scott’s arm lightly as he saw the buildings start to get bigger outside of their compartment window. “You don’t have to, if you don’t want to, it’s fine, I’ll understand -“

 

“Do you not want me to?” Scott pressed his lips together. “It’s a big thing, Al, I’ll understand if you’re getting cold feet”. 

 

“I’m not getting cold feet”, Albus breathed, standing up in the compartment to reach for his suitcase and holdall, the clock tower of St. Pancras’s Station opposite casting a long shadow over the train tracks and station of Kings Cross before they disappeared into the tunnel for platform 9 3/4. “I’m just…this is scary, y’know…like I know my mum liked you a lot when she met you in Diagon Alley that time, but like my whole family is going to be there, and you know that we don’t always see eye-to-eye, and I don’t want you to have to see a big ol’ Potter bust-up on Christmas Day -“

 

“You think it’ll change that innocent angel image I have you?” Scott popped his tongue in his cheek. “We’ve had our fair share of spats, Al”.

 

“Yeah”, Albus cocked his head to one side, “but we always make up after thirty minutes because I haven’t been kissed for at least thirty-two minutes and I miss you. This is different, this is practically bombastic, and I do _not_ want to kiss my dad”.

 

“Well”, Scott heaved as he brought his own holdall down from the wire rack, “if I plan on sticking around with you for more than just a bit of fun and games, then I have to be privy to one of your shouting matches sometime, right?”

 

“And do you?” Albus looked away shyly from his boyfriend’s soft gaze, choosing instead to focus on getting his bags together. “Plan on sticking around for more than just fun and games?”

 

“Depends”, Scott pouted coyly when Albus looked back up again. “Are we gonna fight properly and then decide you don’t want to kiss me after all?”

 

“Can’t promise we won’t fight properly”, Albus bent down to pick up the handle of his hold-all before catching a glance of Scott from the corner of his eye. “But I think I’ll always want to kiss you afterwards”.

 

“I guess I’ll be sticking around, then”, Scott lifted his chin to beckon Albus over, the train shuddering to a slow halt as Scott wrapped his hands around Albus’s waist and drawing him into a chaste kiss, Albus sinking into the velvet spontaneity like treasure to the ocean floor. A knock of the thin window glass brought them back to the ocean surface; Lily was pretending to retch across the corridor floor whilst beckoning them to hurry up. With a pat on the shoulder, Albus drew back the sliding doors, trailing his belongings and his boyfriend behind once they’d got off the steps of the carriage and started searching for his parents on the packed platform. 

 

With a long stray arm waving above a herd of heads and hands, Albus knew he had been located by his father, and he turned with a look and bated breath back to Scott before beckoning him forwards, pushing through the crowds of excited children and harried parents towards the Potter-Granger-Weasley gaggle in the corner by the newspaper stand. 

 

“Al!” his mother burst forwards from the crowd and took her middle son in her arms. “It’s so good to see you again!” 

 

“It’s good to see you too, Mum”, Albus felt his head turn purple before he managed to stop himself from suffocating.

 

“And, Scott, it’s wonderful to meet you again”, Scott took Albus’s mother’s hand as she leant between the Potters and Weasleys. “Let me introduce you to the rest of the clan…”. Scott disappeared from Albus’s view with a slight look of bewilderment back to Albus before he got absorbed by the Potters entirely. In spite of the cheer, Albus couldn’t help the tiniest feeling of unease, as though something small was creeping up, trying its best to jump and grab hold of the tails of his robe to drag him back down to reality again. He followed his bloated family tree out of the column on Platforms 9 and 10 and through the main hall of Kings Cross, Muggle commuters in dull black suits neutralising the glistening baubles of the humongous tinselled Christmas but matching Albus’s malaise perfectly. Absently putting a muggle fifty pence piece into the collection pot of the brass band playing Christmas carols, Albus caught the glance of Scott looking back at him with a lazy smile, gesturing for Albus to join him up with the rest of them. Albus stood emotionless for the briefest of moments; his barbed protest was caught in his throat, the thorns digging into the soft skin. Albus thought for a moment he might be ill. Instead, with the same lazy smile, he swallowed it, and padded forwards with his trolley to join his boyfriend, fitting snuggly beside his shoulder as they walked together into the snow of Central London. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm loving how divided you guys are on who's at blame in the comments! It makes me pretty chuffed that you guys are taking different things from their arguments and their actions, it's so interesting to see what I've written from another perspective. :P Thanks for all the comments and everyone who's read this, as per! Thanks for reading! :)


	6. Fifth Degree (Part II): Commitment

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Home truths come out once and for all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this chapter is where the fic earns its M rating...slight naughtiness awaits you after here - so if that doesn't float your boat, feel ready to flee! Also, this is probably the corniest, fluffiest chapter - so sick buckets at the ready!

_“(Note: if the witch or wizard has found a new relationship to replace the old, they must consider this step carefully. They must not rush or commit with no consideration, lest the witch or wizard have to repeat steps 1 to 4 upon a breakup.)”_

 

***

 

“Albus! Al! Al! _Al!_ ”, one of Albus’s boney, knackered-out cushions came hurtling towards his face. “Wake up, ya lazy bastard!” _Why do all the men in my life insist on throwing pillows at me?_

 

“When I asked you to be my boyfriend, I did not think you’d end up becoming my mother”.

 

“But it’s Christmas Eve, Al!” Albus flinched as light rushed from the newly open curtains with a sharp swish of Scott’s wand. “Don’t make me swish those bedsheets off you!”

 

“Don’t you dare”, Albus groaned. “Just because you turned seventeen in November! I swear I haven’t seen you do anything without magic since we got home! And you used to call yourself a Muggle! It’s like you were born with an extra arm!”

 

The bedsheets flew from Albus’s bed in a parachute of linen, leaving Albus shivering as he rubbed the sleep from his eyes.

 

“Just because you’re not seventeen till February”, Albus felt the bed sag in front of him and looked up to a pyjama-ed Scott grinning back, his quiff flopping over limply to the wrong side of his forehead. “Morning, princess”.

 

“Morning”, Albus croaked, trying to look a little more attractive now that Scott was sat much closer to him. “We must meet like this more often”.

 

“Well”, Scott brought his voice down to a mischievous whisper. “If I do alright at this boyfriend thing, I might just be a couple more nights yet”.

 

“Ah, you think you’re a shoo-in”, Albus winked back. “You think you’re the only one with good pillow aim”.

 

“I got you three times, square on the chops!” 

 

“Ah, but when Matthew Dell gets panicked, he’s like a whirlwind of pillow launching, he’s a beast”.

 

“So you’d rather be doing this conversation with Matthew Dell?” Albus couldn’t help the flip in his stomach at Scott’s real/not-real indignation. “Because I’m sure he’s free, you know, if you wanted, to like, you know, ask him…”

 

“Meh, he wouldn’t get here on time, the Owl Office is shut”, Albus shrugged wickedly, earning another flying pillow to the face. Albus managed to catch it this time and throw it back, Scott feigning a body-blow, collapsing in a heap on the bare bottom sheet. Albus gave a small, quite un-masculine giggle, before collapsing next to Scott on the sheets, looking up at the Weird Sisters posters hanging on his ceiling. 

  
“Don’t those posters scare you at night a little?” Scott asked, pointing at one of the posters of the frontrunner, Myron Wagtail, who was jumping and silently screaming around the brightly lit stage. “Like, don’t they just keep you up all night?”

 

“Meh, you don’t really notice it when it’s been up there for like ten years”, Albus cocked his head leftwards, resting against Scott’s shoulder. He decided to leave it there. 

 

“Hey, the guy in the poster I pointed to looks like this guy out of a Muggle band”, Scott laughed. “Like the guy out of Pulp”.

 

“Pulp?” Albus repeated. “Sounds edgy”.

 

“Merlin no, that’s such Dad music”, Scott replied in disgust. “Just don’t ask me how I know them…”

 

“And there was me thinking that you were going to educate me on edgy music and it comes out my boyfriend like Dad music after all”, Albus poked Scott lightly in the chest and suddenly they were play-fighting, Albus grinning as he tried to wrestle Scott off him. Scott somehow managed to hold onto both of Albus’s wrists whilst keeping Albus’s knees down so as not to get a foot blow to the face. “How are you so good at this?”, Albus whined as he writhed in Scott’s grasp.

 

“You think I’m strong?” Albus let himself go limp and Scott fell on top of his chest, their noses inches apart. “You should see my sister when she wrestles me!”

 

“I can see why you’re strong now, you’re a right lump!”

 

“Be thankful I can’t reach a pillow from here”, Scott smirked. Albus tried to smirk back, but he felt himself becoming more and more aware of their closeness getting closer and closer before becoming nothing and everything as their lips met. Suddenly, Albus found his hands moving lower and lower as the kiss intensified, their noses meeting every so often as their kisses became deeper and deeper, too deep to hold eye contact for longer than a second. 

 

Albus brought his hands back up before they reached Scott’s waist and placed them on Scott’s chest instead, electrified by the feeling of Scott’s heartbeat pulsing frantically within his grasp. Albus felt Scott drift his hand to the small of Albus’s back where his pyjama shirt had rolled up, the practically never-before-touched skin jumping at the flickering flames, making Albus feel practically sauna-like under his pyjamas. 

 

Desperate to feel some skin as well, Albus let his hands drop down Scott’s pyjama shirt, the hem of the shirt hanging limply in the air as Scott arched his back slightly, showing off his navel and his rather hairy stomach in the darkest of shadows. Before Albus could think about it too much, he threaded his hand under the soft fabric of the shirt until he placed his hands onto Scott’s bare chest, his eyes still closed. Albus sighed in relief when he felt Scott’s smile widen their never-ending kiss, and Albus let himself explore a little with his hands, running over Scott’s smooth chest and back. 

 

Of course, whatever Albus could do, Scott took the steps of courage that Albus was far too mesmerised to think of taking. Albus had only just gotten used to the feeling of his skin between his fingers when he felt a whole other level of hot when he realised that Scott’s left hand had slowly disappeared underneath the hem of Albus’s pyjama bottoms and to the bare skin he had found underneath. Albus felt his body grow as he got more and more used to the sensation, offering a smile of his own into the kiss which Scott immediately reciprocated. 

 

Then Albus felt it. Scott had moved slightly across Albus’s chests and he had come across a block of sorts when he had tried to move across Albus’s waist. Albus felt himself turn the darkest shade of Gryffindor red but kept the kiss going since he doubted Scott had his eyes open even as they moved ever so slightly again at the waist, causing Albus’s midriff to send a million fireworks hurtling through his body in an ecstatic buzz. 

 

“Do that again”, Albus startled himself saying that, not even having considered saying it aloud beforehand, but did not complain when Scott complied with a wide grin and a small forward shake of his hips. “Bloody hell, Scott…”

  
The floorboards outside of the bedroom creaked and the pair sprang apart like an explosion to opposite sides of the room, still panting and sweating from the intensity. The noise stopped for a moment before Albus heard the footsteps potter off down the corridor towards the staircase. 

 

“Fuck”, Albus held his head as he tried to catch his breath, eyes still closed. “Did we just…on my bed…?”

 

“Yeah”, he heard Scott panting from over by the desk. “Did…did you like it?”

 

“Oh, we’re definitely finishing what we started at some point!” Albus wheezed, daring to open his eyes. Scott was sat against the curtains, looking flushed but sporting possibly the biggest grin Albus had ever seen on a human being, let alone just on his boyfriend. “Probably a good job we didn’t right to the end today, though, I can’t be arsed washing my sheets the day before Christmas”.

 

“Ewww”, Scott grinned before slowly getting to his feet, putting a stray hand through his fringe to attempt to give it some sort of shape. Albus got up as well, feeling a random pull for him to get up and take his boyfriend in his arms once more. “Don’t start again, Albus! I don’t think my lips or my groin can take it…”

 

“It’s fine, I won’t”, Albus smiled back, rocking Scott slightly as they stood in the brightening room, the low sun peeking above the small thatched cottages of Godric’s Hollow. “You know, Scott…I think…I think I l-“

 

Knock knock knock. “Breakfast’ll be ready in five, boys!” came his father’s booming voice from the other side of the thin bedroom door. 

 

Albus rolled his eyes and sighed. “I think we better get ready to be presentable…”

 

Scott flashed him a sympathetic glance, almost as if he knew what Albus was about to tell him. “Yeah, we better”.

 

***

 

Grandma Weasley hadn’t taken too kindly to the fact that this would be the first Christmas away from the Burrow since the Second Wizarding War - so badly, in fact, that she seemed to make it her holiday’s mission to corner every single member of her ginormous family at some point during Christmas Eve night with her half-glass of sherry, sharing memories of glorious Burrow Christmases of yesteryear with the subtlest of digs at his mother and father for the slightest imperfections of their own preparations. After the first couple of hours, his mother and father had hastily started trying to feed her blackcurrant juice instead of sherry in an attempt to end the subtle criticism. However, their greatest blunder had been asking James to keep an eye on her, who, with a sly wink and a smirk in Albus’s direction, slipped the sherry back into Grandma Weasley’s glass and back into her hand. 

 

It had been hilarious when Grandma Weasley hadn’t been cornering him and Scott, but the pair could only evade their grandmother for so long before she had managed to catch them unawares, sitting by the fire as Albus twiddled the knob of his white bishop in thought, trying to get out of check. 

 

“Oh, so this must be my extra jumper this year!” came the tooth-rottingly familiar cackle as Grandma Weasley came and sat on the empty space on the settee beside the fireplace. “You must be Percival Phillips’s grandson!”

 

“The one and only”, Scott mumbled unsurely, flashing a quick friendly glance with one eye still on the board. “I’m Scott”.

 

“Yes, Ginny told me”, Albus caught her permanent smile glow out of the corner of his eye. “I used to go to school with your grandfather - a couple of years above me, of course. He always seemed like he was going to achieve something, you know. He just had that feeling, that air about him. What’s he doing now? He’s practically gone into hiding since the Antarctic Expedition of ’75. I always wondered what happened to Percy…”

 

“Oh, he died quite young, before I was born”, Scott tried matching the smile, but his concentration made it go wonky after a second and Albus watched him give up after three. “I think it was all those expeditions that did it in the end”.

 

“Oh…”, the smile faltered for a moment. Grandma Weasley swilled the sherry around the tiny glass, letting a smile silence pass like an asteroid impact. “It’s a shame you didn’t get to know him, he was such an interesting man”.

 

“Don’t let Grandpa hear you talk about Scott’s granddad like that”, Albus smirked, not looking up. Grandma Weasley gave him a clock around the head with a tiny wallop, probably slightly more heavy handed than she meant because she started patting Albus’s head frantically. Albus hadn’t felt any of it - he was still in check. 

 

“Well”, Grandma Weasley readjusted herself on the seat and took a sip of the sherry. “So…Scott, it’s interesting that your first Weasley Christmas is here in Godric’s Hollow and…and not at The Burrow. It means you don’t have any…preconceptions of what a real wizarding Christmas is like, it’s all so fresh for you. Of course, this is a lot different from how it was at The Burrow…I’m sure Albus has filled you in on those, right?”

 

“Right, they sounded amazing, Mrs Weasley…”

 

“Well, thank you!” Grandma Weasley clapped her hands suddenly and took Scott in her arms. As she did so, she dropped her glass straight onto the chessboard as panic-stricken chess pieces fled the sherry downpour and the broken glass. “If only the rest of your boyfriend’s family could have the same sense of occasion as you do, Scott…”

 

“We all love your Burrow Christmases, Grandma”, Albus took the rag that Lily had found in the kitchen to mop up whilst Scott cast a Repairing Charm on the glass. “We just thought it might be nicer and more intimate to have it here when fewer people are coming than before”.

 

“The cheek of them, Scott”, Grandma Weasley pressed her finger into Scott’s chest. “I barely see half of my children more than twice a year, let alone my grandchildren! So it’s really not that much to ask of them that they come round the family home for four days at Christmas so I can see them all, is it, Scott?”

 

“Um…well -“

 

“I knew you’d agree with me, Scott”, Grandma Weasley nodded her head as though she’d figured out the most elaborate murder-mystery. “See, Albus, you could learn a lot from your boyfriend. _He_ knows how to treat the elders of his family -!”

 

“That’s enough, Mum!”, Albus flinched as the angry crash of pans in the kitchen demonstrated the very last of his mother’s tether. “We decided you deserved a break from all the preparation and the stress as our Christmas present to you for all the lovely Christmases we had when we were younger! We weren’t always so grateful for all the work you put in, but now we’re older, we wanted to show you how we felt. But no, that’s not good enough for you, because it’s not exactly how you wanted it, how you planned it, how you’d make the turkey or how you’d hang the decorations. We can always leave you to plan the whole thing and we can go down the pub if you’d like?”

 

“I didn’t even get asked if I didn’t want to do it this year!” Albus flinched again as Grandma Weasley’s incredibly shrill indignation punched a hole in the side of Albus’s head. “You just assumed I’d had enough like I didn’t like putting all that energy into it for you, that it wasn’t my labour of love towards this family…”

 

Albus’s father had sidled up to his side as Grandma Weasley continued her sherry-soaked diatribe, hissing in his ear softly, “I thought we’d asked you to stop feeding her sherry…now she’s all upset over nothing…”

 

“You’d asked James”, Albus muttered darkly within his father’s earshot. “He was the one with the sherry bottle, not me”.

 

“Well, why did you have to bring that up in the first place, or get her to stop talking about it? You knew she was feeling volatile about it, you couldn’t have just fed her some nice words and then let her work her way around the rest of the room?”

 

“No, because I don’t want to palm her off like some aged bat who can’t think straight”.

 

“That was uncalled for, Albus”, his father hissed more loudly, shooting an icicle-sharp glare in Albus’s direction. “I just thought you’d grown out of rocking the boat by now -“

 

“Grown out?” Albus barked back incredulously. Grandma Weasley finally stopped ranting as everyone else turned their attention to Albus and his father. “Grown out? Are you having a laugh? You think I’m just rocking the boat because I like it? Because I like to be different, to spite you? Is that really how you see me?”

 

“Can’t you see, Al?”, his father splayed his hands in front of him in frustration. “You’re doing it again! You really think this is the proper time or place to come out with this?”

 

“No”, Albus cocked his head defiantly. “But it wasn’t me that came out with it! I’m merely defending myself because no one else will!”

 

“What’s that supposed to mean?”, his father growled. “This is just you and your silly ideas again…”

 

“Silly?!” Albus seethed, his vision starting to cloud with rage. Dropping his rag, he added bitterly, “I suppose us trying to get to know each other better was always going to be on your terms…”

 

“Boys!” his mother’s voice carried like a bomb blast from across the living room, but Albus’s father ignored her with his back turned. 

 

“My terms?! I can count the amount of times you’ve told us anything about your life on about three fingers! How I’m supposed to get to know you if you just shut yourself all the damn time?”

 

“How about, y’know, asking once in a while?”, Albus felt his fingers shake as he desperately tried to shake off some energy. “You stopped asking ages ago because I never had anything amazing to tell you before…now you just assume I haven’t done anything amazing or even passably interesting!”

 

“How are we supposed to know that when you didn’t even tell us that?”, his father snarled. “It’s not like you announced it when you had something to say! When we asked you before, you’d just mention something about what you and Scorpius had done, what you’d gotten in your exams, and then skulk off! You have to give us something to play with, Al…”

 

“That was what I had to play with!”, Albus almost cried out, feeling so acutely aware and embarrassed by his own lack of achievement in comparison to his family, even with the last year taken into account. “That’s all I had! So when I told you that, it was such an achievement for me to find a friend that cared about me and didn’t want to bully me or laugh at me. But _no_ , of course, it’s not enough because I’ve not got into the Quidditch team or I haven’t had four girlfriends by the age of twelve or I’m not a Gryffindor -“

 

“Don’t you dare play that card again, Al! You know that I’ve accepted it, that you’re proud of your house! How dare you think I’m still hung up on something like that?”

 

“-, so all my experiences and achievements mean absolutely nothing in comparison! Why do you think I didn’t tell you? Because it was never natural for me to tell you, because you didn’t think I was capable of it. How dare you have such a low opinion of me that all I’m worth is getting a Slug Club invite or winning bronze at Ilvermorny? Was me getting a boyfriend not enough? Was me getting over Scorpius and Rose not enough? Was me finding friends when I’ve got such a low opinion of myself not enough? Was me being decent at Potions or Care of Magical Creatures not enough? Please, do tell me, I’d love to set the bar a little more impossibly high than it was before!”

 

“ _Go to your room, Albus!_ ”, his father roared so loudly that it echoed for a few seconds through the walls, the room totally silent save the flickering fireplace, which only added to the tension. 

 

“With pleasure!” Albus took off through the cramped living room, bursting past his tearful sister and up the creaking staircase. He heard two pairs of footsteps race after him and his mother shout, “Well bloody done, Harry!”; Albus was simply moving forwards as much as he could before collapsing through his door and straight onto his bed like an over-absorbing sponge. 

 

He felt all the anger and tension finally start to trickle out of him as he let salty tears stream out onto the bed, focussing on the intense anger and loneliness that he felt rather than the commotion that was going on beyond his door. 

 

“Please, please”, Albus vaguely heard his sister plead outside his room. “Scott, I need to see him -“

 

“I think he just wants to be left alone at the moment, Lil”, Scott’s voice was laced with as much kindness as possible, but Albus could sense Scott’s own worry in his tone. 

 

“I’m not gonna shout at him if that’s what you think”, Lily sniffed. “I just wanted him to know that I love him for being Albus, not for whatever Mum and Dad want him to be”.

 

“I’m sure he appreciates it if he’s listening”, Scott replied softly. His boyfriend was right; even if he had made up with his siblings long ago, it made Albus feel a little warmer knowing that Lily and James understood him, that they wanted him to know they loved him. “I’m sure he’ll be up for chatting soon, but I think it’s best we leave him to get over what happened”.

 

It went silent apart from Lily’s sobs for a few moments before the floorboards of the stairs started creaking again and Albus’s door clicked slowly. Albus kept his tear-soaked face to himself but felt the bed sag next to him and long, soft fingers start running slowly through his hair. 

 

“Lily wanted to see you”, Scott whispered. “She wanted to know that she loves you for you, not for your dazzling achievements”.

 

“I know”, Albus snuffed, another sob stuck in his lungs. “I heard”.

 

The room fell silent again for a few minutes. Scott had taken to drawing patterns into Albus’s hair like his mother used to do to get him off to sleep, and Albus felt looser as he let Scott’s massage sink into his skull. “I guess this is what you meant by a big Potter bust-up”.

 

“Yep, pretty much what I had in mind”.

 

“Well, at least I’ve had my first one…I’ll know what to expect the second time…”

 

“There shouldn’t have to be a next time”, Albus growled, his face feeling snotty and bubbly as he spoke. “I really thought Dad was making an effort, but it turns out I was completely wrong…I just don’t get his problem, why he had to pick that fight tonight, right there? He must have known that. What does he have to gain from just starting something?”

 

“Try not to think too much about it”, Scott whispered, pushing Albus onto his side towards the middle of the bed. Albus almost felt like protesting for a few moments before he felt himself tip backwards under Scott’s weight on the other side of the bed. Scott wrapped his arm and leg around Albus’s body before whispering an incantation to bring the lights of the room down. “I learnt that spell in this random book I was reading, it’s so cool!”

 

“It is”, Albus brought Scott’s hand over onto his own chest, and Scott shimmied closer on the mattress towards Albus’s tense body. Silence reigned once more, and Albus was so incredibly grateful for it. He loved that he couldn’t hear shouting and raging from downstairs, his sister’s tearful sobs from another room, the muttering of life and human beings. He could only hear Scott’s slow, controlled breathing into his ear. He could only feel Scott’s heartbeat against his back, slow and deliberate. He loved how present he felt all of a sudden, how much he felt alive next to his boyfriend as though they inhabited their own little world just for two.

  
“Albus”, Scott muttered. 

 

“Yeah?”

 

“I love you”.

 

The world around Albus stopped moving entirely. Albus could only feel Scott’s heartbeat rise ever so slowly against Albus’s back, and it felt as though they were connected through the thin material of their T-shirts, becoming one person. Albus felt Scott tense up a little as the silence began to continue, so Albus slowly put his fingers through Scott’s hand on his chest to calm him. He had so many words buzzing around in his head like butterflies, and they’d come out in time when it wasn’t so hectic and volatile around them. But Albus only found four words that were on the tip of his tongue, and he finally let them out when he had mustered enough strength. 

 

“I love you, too”.

  
Another moment’s silence fell like a tree before Scott could formulate his own reply. “Really? You love me?”

 

Albus turned around in his place to face his boyfriend and was taken aback by the vulnerable glow that flashed brightly in his eyes. “Of course I do, it’s impossible not to love you, Scott”.

 

“But -“

 

“I was silent because I couldn’t believe anyone could ever love me, that anyone could ever think I was a decent enough guy to want to be someone’s boyfriend and to be loved by them…I’ve…I’ve loved you for a while…”

 

“Same”, Scott breathed. “I…I was gonna try and tell you at the Triwizard Tournament, but we got cut off”.

 

“I almost did it accidentally at the Triwizard Tournament when you remembered to bring pick-n-mix when I forgot to bring the sweets…”

 

“You’ve loved me since the Triwizard Tournament?”

 

“Yeah”, Albus smiled into his whisper this time, putting his hand to Scott’s cheek to wipe a wayward tear from his eye. “It’s been a little while coming”.

 

“You’re telling me…”, Scott sighed with a chuckle. “So…you love me, Potter?”

 

“Yeah”, Albus laughed a little louder. “Yeah, I do”.

 

“Good”, Scott lifted his wand and swished the sheets and the duvet back onto the bed and over the two of them. “Because it would be awkward for me if you hogging all my love and not giving it back”.

 

“Definitely”, Albus whispered and shimmied across the sheets further into Scott’s arms. He shut his eyes and listened to their breathing synchronise into perfect symmetry before drowning in sleep. 

 

***

 

Christmas morning with the Potters had never been so quiet in all of Albus’s life. He’d almost shocked himself in the morning when he woke up fully clothed in bed next to a fully clothed sleeping Scott, but his heart swooned when he realised what they had happened the night before (post-Harry Potter explosion, anyway). Kissing him lightly on the head, Albus lifted himself above his boyfriend to get a view of the Harpies clock on his bedside table, the minute hand drooping lazily across the six as half past nine unceremoniously arrived.

 

Half past nine.

 

On Christmas Day.

 

Something must have really happened last night for the Potters not to be devouring food and be ripping open wrapping paper at half past five. It left Albus with a profound sense of reluctant guilt resting in his stomach acids, simmering away in a sea of butterflies. 

 

Deciding to brave the no-man’s-land of the upstairs landing with a definitive huff, he grudgingly uncoupled himself from his snoozing boyfriend and slipped on his neutral burgundy Hogwarts dressing gown (his emerald Slytherin gown had been banished to Scotland and was prohibited within a four-hundred-mile radius of Godric’s Hollow). Stopping at the door momentarily to summon his last reserve of fight left in him in case his father fancied round two, he opened it slowly. The corridor was totally silent. He peeked left and right. Still nothing. On the highest tips of his toes that he could stretch to, he moved swiftly down the corridor towards the staircase with the lightest of floor board titters. Still no sound. He took each stair with the lightest of touches, the creaking muted like a turning pirate ship. He clung onto the bannister like a rope, pulling himself along like scaling a precipice, the top always moving one step away.

 

He got to the bottom of the stairs. Still no one in the kitchen. He turned around and jumped a mile. 

 

“Merry Christmas, Albus!”

 

It had to have been the whole living family tree down in the Potters’ medium-sized living room, all armed with a flute of Bucks Fizz in a toast and dressed in traditional Weasley Christmas attire: the knitted jumper. Albus’s jaw dropped several feet as he tried to understand what was going on in front of him. In the centre of the group, his mother and father held each other, flanked by a smirking James and a grinning Lily. Then there were Weasleys coming out of his ears in all directions; he could see Bill and Fleur with Victoire, Teddy Lupin waving enthusiastically from the back; Grandpa and Grandma Weasley were smiling right in the middle of the group with their arms around each other like Albus’s parents, surrounded by Charlie, Percy, George, and all their associated spouses and children; to the right, Uncle Ron and Aunt Hermione waved with Hugo. _Where’s Rose…?_  

 

“How…how…how are you all managing to fit in this room…?”, was the first thing Albus could think to splutter out. 

 

“Enlarging Charm”, his mother explained proudly. “Took us two hours, but still looks cosy”.

 

“But…but…I thought everyone was really busy this Christmas to meet up?”

 

“Nothing like a family emergency to rally up the troops, Al”, James smiled, possibly in the most genuine way that Albus had ever seen. 

 

“But…but…why would you do this for me…? What did I do to deserve this?”

 

This time, Albus’s father walked up. Albus almost flinched subconsciously, but he managed to stay rooted to his place when his father bent down and rested a hand on Albus’s shoulder. “You managed to find your place in Hogwarts after spending so long feeling like you had none. You’ve found friends that you can count on. You’re passing your school work, you’re finding out what you’re passionate about. You found someone who loves you for exactly who you are and isn’t your mother -“, Albus laughed for a moment behind the tears he was trying so valiantly to keep back. “We’ve got so much to be proud of with you and we cheated ourselves out of sharing your achievements with you. We’re really sorry for how everything’s turned out”, his father turned to his mother for a moment, his mother’s slightly sheepish grimace silently echoing the sentiment, “and we really wanted to make it up to you, show you that you can trust your family again, that we love you. So…do you…d’you think we can start over again, Al?”

 

Albus looked up into his father’s eyes and found himself for once not struggling to look into them, as though the poles were changing and suddenly he weren’t being repelled anymore. He saw slight guilt replace the stubborn anger that had clouded his father’s glare the night before, and in turn, Albus felt his own face soften in response, almost perturbed that he could feel the corners of his mouth begin to lift upwards. 

 

“Well…as it’s Christmas…”, the rest of his sentence was drowned out by the cheering crowd, and Albus felt his mother and father draw him in tight in the embrace, their warmth spreading through their arms and into Albus’s torso, like he were five years old all over again and they’d just spent a late autumn’s afternoon walking around and kicking the leaves and riding on his father’s broom with a whoop of delight. It was refreshing to feel a bond like that again. 

 

“And there was me thinking this was my welcoming party”, Scott called indignantly from the staircase before a wicked smile flashed across his lips. “What is this?”

 

“We’re toasting Al”, Lily beamed with her glass of orange juice. “With drinks, of course, not  over a fire or anything…”

 

“We’re dedicating this Christmas to Al”, James hollered. “Apparently this grumpy sarcastic bugger is the best little bro I could ever hope to have so…to Al”, he lifted his glass.

 

“To Al!”, rang around the room, and Albus felt Scott move in beside him with a sly arm and a quick hug. Albus muttered a shy thanks and James started a rather unnecessary round of applause that tittered in appreciation around the living room. 

 

“Right”, Grandma Weasley pushed her way through the gathering with two jumpers under her arm, “you two get these on you! Now, who’s up for a big Christmas fry up at The Burrow?”

 

“Me!”, erupted in a chorus of excited voices, everyone chattering good-humouredly as people began to get ready to Floo over to the traditional venue. 

 

Albus turned to Scott, who had just put on his new ’S’ yellow and black jumper on, and kissed him on the mouth. It felt perfect and festive on his tongue, and he loved how Scott had already integrated into his family with his own Christmas jumper. It made him feel warm to think that his family had accepted his boyfriend as their own, and saw him as another member of the family.

 

“Hello, you never initiate”, Scott smiled wryly when they finally broke apart. “What’s the occasion?”

 

“Merry Christmas, Phillips”, Albus grinned, leaning in for another kiss when he noticed mistletoe starting to grow above their heads. Flinging his head backwards, he saw a sheepish James and Lily run off behind the sofa. Throwing a vacant V-sign and a cushion their way, he felt a tug around his back and the kiss followed, all memories of the argument last night washing away like a wave of ink claiming the past once and for all. 

 

***

 

For all of the commotion that everyone had made in the morning, Albus still found himself sat alone on the sofa of his grandmother’s living room as the post-dinner festivities whipped themselves into full swing. Scott’s parents had had their first Flooing experience earlier that afternoon, meeting their son at The Burrow to join the enormous party for dinner. The three were currently sat on the seats towards the back of the room, Scott’s father twiddling Scott’s wand around in his hand with the faintest incredulity. Albus’s parents had joined the large cleaning effort back in the kitchen, dodging the plates and pans that flew around the kitchen in an organised chaos. Albus watched Lily sat on the floor with an assortment of Weasley cousins around her as she retold the story of her amazing goal against Slytherin last term, Hugo’s eyes round in wondrous amazement as she spoke. 

 

Albus was alone again. But, for the first time, he was happy to be. He felt a great wave of appreciation lap over him slowly as he looked around him once more. Belonging took him by the hand next to him and he sighed contently, once and for all convinced that this was all he needed to be happy. He tried this new comfort on, slipped it onto his shoulders and wrapped it around his torso like an old jacket. He felt wrapped up in the warmest of wools, snug and protected from the elements. 

 

“Oi, Potter”, James called from behind him as he jumped over the back of the sofa and onto the cushion next to Albus. “What’s this, you being alone on Christmas? Did this morning teach you nothing?”

 

“Oh, I got the message loud and clear”, Albus raised his hands. “I’m happy like this sometimes, it’s nice just to watch the world go by instead of being in it the whole time”.

 

“Well, alone time’s officially over”, James patted him on the back with enough force to bring Albus to his feet. “The annual Christmas Quidditch match is about to start, Gryffindor vs Hogwarts - your lot need you as a Keeper!”

 

“Have they ever actually seen me in goal?”, Albus scowled quizzically. 

 

James ignored him completely, pressing a helmet and an old broom to Albus’s chest. “We’re starting in ten minutes! Besides, you get a chance to play alongside lover-boy…”

 

“Scott’s gonna play?” _That_ piqued Albus’s attention. “I don’t think I’ve ever even seen him on a broom!”

 

“I guess that’s what teenage love does to a boy”, Lily taunted playfully as she walked past him with her Hogwarts broom under her arm. 

 

Albus sighed and rolled his eyes. “Fi-“

 

A sudden rush of dust and light from the fireplace filled the room. Rose Granger-Weasley marched across the room in an ash-covered red polka dot dress, her face the same colour, if not a little more crimson. 

 

“Rose, dear?”, Aunt Hermione stepped out of the kitchen with a serving plate in her hand. “Rose, dear, what is it?”

 

“How _dare_ he embarrass me like this? How dare he?”, Rose seethed, dumping her bag by the wall next to the kitchen and stomped towards the stairs. 

 

“Who, Rosie?”, Albus heard Uncle Ron’s voice from behind Aunt Hermione; the rest of the room had fallen silent in anxious expectation. 

 

“Scorpius Malfoy”, she spat. Albus could see the tears starting to form in her eyes. “The rat’s just _dumped_ me!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, so I might need an eighth chapter... XD But are we Scorbus bound? Who knows... Let me know what you think in the comments; I love how much debate I'm stirring, it's nice having an undecided readership because I can see more sides to the characters than even I had thought about! Keep them coming, and thanks for everyone who's commented and Kudos'd and read this! See you next update!


	7. Sixth Degree (Part I): Reconciliation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Albus is confused. Scott is hurt. Scorpius is hopeful. Lily saves the day. (Matt shocks everyone.)

_“Sixth degree - reconciliation: the witch or wizard comes to terms what happened from the distance of their new life”._

 

***

 

_31st December 2022_

_Malfoy Manor, Wiltshire_

 

_Dearest Albus,_

 

_So you’ve probably heard… It just wasn’t working out anymore. If I’m honest, it hasn’t been working for ages; I was just kidding myself that it’s what I really wanted. I hope Rose can forgive me in time, I know that she didn’t deserve what I must have put her through. You’ve not seen the lovely, kind, intelligent side of her in so long, the side I’ve been able to see. You should give her a chance to be your friend again._

 

_There’s so much for us to talk about, Al, but I don’t know how to put any of it into words. I’m so sorry for how things turned out between us, I can’t believe I let things get so out of control. You’re my person, Albus, no matter who I’m with and where I am. I hope you know that._

 

_Please, can we catch up when we get back to Hogwarts? There’s something important I want to discuss with you._

 

_I hope your Christmas was lovely and I can’t wait to see you again soon._

 

_Your dear friend,_

 

_Scorpius_

 

***

 

_4th January 2023_

_Godric's Hollow, Somerset_

 

_Dear Scorp,_

 

_I’m sorry to hear that, mate. Rose burst through our fireplace at The Burrow, so I kinda found out first-hand. I’m sure she’ll forgive you after she’s worked stuff out in her head. Not sure me and Rose being friends is on the cards particularly, though._

 

_Sure, we can chat. Let me know when you’re free when we’re back at school - we’ll talk then._

 

_Happy New Year, see you soon._

 

_Your friend,_

 

_Albus_

 

***

 

January was normally a sorry month at the best of times, but the January of sixth year had really taken the biscuit. The fireplaces of the common rooms felt at least ten degrees colder than they should have been. Albus’s homework journal had never seemed quite so full of essays and reading to do. Breakfasts tasted bland, the rain outside never abated. This was a pretty dreadful January. 

 

Albus’s January was no different, and certainly different from the previous year’s January, when Albus had too much energy to even notice he was supposed to be miserable. He found himself in the library on more nights than ever, wrapped up in his emerald Slytherin Christmas jumper around towers of potions books and errant rolls of parchment strewn across desks. He and Scott were spending more time together in silence than actually speaking to one another, save the frantic scribbling of quills and frequent desperate sighs. 

 

Albus hadn’t spoken to Scorpius yet either. If he was being completely honest, Albus didn’t really think he wanted to. Things were finally comfortable in his life now; he had a family to count on, friends that accepted him, a boyfriend who loved him. How would Scorpius’s return change that? Would his father accept a Malfoy as a best friend for his son? Would he even like Matthew and the Ravenclaw girls? And now the boot was on the other foot; how on earth could he balance Scorpius with his work, his new friendship group, _and_ Scott? If anything was abundantly clear to Albus, he really did not want the complication. 

 

That hadn’t stopped Albus from noticing all of the deep, searching glances that Scorpius would shoot across classrooms, across dormitories, across quadrangles. They were the sort of glances you’d need the most elaborate maps to escape from; so labyrinthine were the walls that masked Scorpius’s true emotions that Albus felt sickeningly lost after a single moment. 

Scorpius hadn’t dared to even approach Albus, not even when they were sharing a dormitory. Albus would wake up at half seven, wander absently into the shower, re-emerge looking vaguely presentable and wait for Matthew to brush his teeth before meeting Daphne and Ellie for breakfast. And the curtains around Scorpius’s bed remained shut. At least it was slightly more reassuring than the made-up sheets that plagued Albus’s view for a year and a half. He still didn’t know what went on those nights; one library session, he decided he never wanted to know. 

 

Boy, did he want to know what Scorpius had to tell him. But he didn’t. He shouldn’t. He really couldn’t.

 

He was kidding himself. He really did. With the most drawn-out of sighs, he rolled up his potions essay and slotted it into his bag. Kissing Scott before leaving to call it a night in the library, he started desperately finding the courage to ask Scorpius for the chat that he had been promised. 

 

—-

 

His courage boiled into thin air when he reached the dormitory; Scorpius’s curtains were drawn wide open, and only Matthew was curled up on his bed, open books lying idly around him in a semicircle as he flopped back on his pillow and sighed. He perked up slightly when Albus came into the room, the books toppling down the side of the bed in his excitement.

 

“Oh Albus, am I glad to see you”, Matthew huffed, fishing around with a long, thin arm for the books on the floor. “I’m going insane!”

 

“Preaching to the choir, mate”, Albus dumped his books in his trunk at the foot of his bed and flopped face-forward on the bed. “I’m knackered. What’s up with you?”

 

“I just don’t get this clue”, Matthew put a desperate hand on his forehead. “‘Upwards, towards the light’…what the hell is that supposed to mean? Do I need a broom? I tried reading in books to see if it was a quote or something…”

 

“I really don’t know”, Albus replied shortly, regretting it but not having the energy to apologise. “Maybe practise your flying just in case? Catching things, maybe?”

 

“Yeah, I’ll practise at the weekend…”, Matthew packed his books on his bedside table resignation, shooting a glance back towards Albus’s face-down position before stopping. “Al…you alright, Al?”

 

“Yeah…”, Albus breathed roughly. “Wait…no…”

 

“So…no?”

 

“I…I was hoping to see Scorpius…we were gonna have a chat…”

 

“A chat?” Albus turned his head round to see Matthew screw his nose up. “You guys speaking again?”

 

“Through letters”, Albus confessed, rolling over onto his back to look at the stone grey dungeon ceiling. “Just a couple. He said he wanted a chat now that him and Rose are done…I came up to see if he was in, and now the time’s gone…”

 

“The time for what?”

 

“To talk…I dunno…I dunno why I even want to talk to him. My life’s really good without the whole thing changing again…and things were shitty with Scorp…fuck, why does he still have the power to do this to me?”

 

“He doesn’t have the power to make you do anything you don’t want to”, Matthew shrugged as he was finding clean pyjamas to wear. “You don’t want to do it, so don’t it”.

 

“Yeah…”, Albus muttered, half to himself. Then he raised his voice, confidence starting to seep into his shoulders and his brow. “Yeah. Yeah! Fuck’s sake, I’m not going to change my life now when it’s going so well. Scorp had his chance to make things better when he was with Rose, and I had to move on. Fuck it! No fucking way -“

“Any more swear words you’ve forgotten to mention…?”

 

“Bugger off, wankstain”, Albus shot at Matthew before sitting up straighter on the bed. “I’m happy enough, already…yeah…sorry, I’ve…I’ve gotta go…”. In a sweep of his school robes, he took his rucksack, stuffed unfolded pyjamas into his bag with his toothbrush and marched back over to the door. 

 

“Nice having this conversation with you, too…!”, Matthew called weakly behind the closing door. Albus hoped to Merlin he wouldn’t have to wear his pyjamas that night. 

 

***

 

The hoop was ten feet in front of him. All Albus had to do was focus and turn on the spot. Focus. And turn on the spot. And not focus on the swirling black hole of numbing fear that filled his stomach, threatening to pull him into the ground. 

 

“Oh my God…”, Albus looked to his left, Matthew having just appeared in his hoop with a sink-plug slurp, wide-eyed. “Albus…Albus, I think…I think I’m missing something…where’s my left eyebrow…?” He started scrabbling at his face as though he was melting and couldn’t quite believe it. 

 

“It’s above your left eye”, Albus rolled his eyes but focussed on his hoop, not actually interested in checking if Matthew had splinched himself or not. “Come on, Albus”, he whispered to himself, narrowing his eyes in deep concentration. “Come on…”. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, kicked off his foot from the ground to turn and -

 

“Albus”.

 

Albus opened his eyes, losing his balance in surprise and falling straight into Scorpius.

 

“Scorp! Do you mind?” Albus heaved himself up from the ground with a grunt, turning away from Scorpius’s icy gaze instead of giving his friend a hand back to his feet. “You do that more often and you’ll end up with a wand in your eye…”

 

“We haven’t spoken in ages, Al”, Scorpius cut to the chase, and Albus looked back over his shoulder in surprise. “You said at New Year’s we could chat, it’s the seventh of February. I dunno if you’re just ignoring me again, or if we’re just finding it hard to bump into each other, but I can’t wait much longer to speak to you”.

 

Albus rubbed his hand over his eyes, still finding it difficult to look directly in his eyes. How had Albus ever been able to look Scorpius in the eye before Rose? How had he been able to withstand the crushing gravity of his gaze, the hypnosis that emanated from the slightest of ice cold glances? Albus thought that might be what apparating felt like; he had no desire to go through that again. But the look in Scorpius’s eyes, in the millisecond of determination that Albus had gleaned from his quick glance back, Albus knew that he would be back again and again until they had spoken. “Fine…five minutes…”

 

Scorpius’s eyes turned softer as though he hadn’t expected a ‘yes’. “O-o-okay, now?”

 

“No time like the present”, Albus pushed past him and led him out to the Atrium and out through the big castle doors. He was appreciative of the cold slap of winter air in his face, bringing him from the dizzying thought of a Splinch to the head. He turned on his heel to Scorpius catching him up, a hopeful but bashful smile on his face. “What is it that you wanted to speak to me about, Scorpius?”

 

“I…it’s really good to speak to you again, Al”, Scorpius blinked, an innocence laced into it that made Albus feel uneasy. “I really wish we could have spoken sooner, there’s some things I needed to get off my chest”.

 

“Well, now’s your opportunity”, Albus bobbed his head, hoping his impatience wasn’t so easy to spot. 

 

“Right, okay”, Scorpius ruffled himself up. _Yeah, it was totally noticeable_. “Well…um…I really…I want us to…look, Al…what I mean is…”

 

“Scorp, no offence, but that lesson is costing me a galleon”, Albus huffed, even though he’d much prefer to stay outside and not inevitably splinch himself.

 

“Look…this is really hard to explain…there’s so much I need to tell you, to explain to you, why everything went so wrong…I understand it now, I understand why you were so distant before, why you distracted yourself with Scott -“

 

“Distracted myself?”, Albus repeated incredulously. “Scott was never a distraction…maybe finding new friends and new hobbies distracted me, but I never set out to find someone like Scott…we met, we got along, we started going out, we love each other…I don’t call that a distraction…”

 

“You…you love him…?” Scorpius looked as though he had shrunk about three feet; his eyes seemed wider than his head, and he hung his shoulders forward in a defeated slump. “But…but it’s only been…”

 

“It’s been a year, mate”, Albus had never felt so ambivalent towards his relationship with Scorpius - if truth be told, it scared him a little that he wasn’t so upset by Scorpius’s reaction, even if it confused him. “A lot can happen in a year…I managed to find someone who replaced the hole you left. I didn’t replace you personally…it’s just how things turned out”.

 

“But now I’m not with Rose, I have all the time in the world for you”, Scorpius’s whine carried across the wind, scraping its fingernails down the crumbling stone of the castle. “We can be like we were -“

 

“Scorp, I was fifteen since we were last ‘how we were’”, Albus retorted with air quotes. “I’m seventeen now…how do you expect me not to have changed at all since then? I’ve grown close with different people now, I’ve got a new life…I can’t just sack ‘em all off because suddenly you’re available!”

 

“But you said I was your person!”, Scorpius barked suddenly, taking Albus aback somewhat. “You said you would always be there for me, by my side, no matter what! At least I tried when I was with Rose, but you never gave me the chance to prove it to you because you were always hiding away!”

 

“I never had a hope in hell competing with Rose back then, remember?”, Albus raised his voice to match Scorpius’s. “Where were you when you were with Rose? Certainly not by my side! I didn’t have a clue where the fuck you were most of the time! Your bed wasn’t even slept in most of the time, fuck only knows what you were actually up to! You changed, so I had to change. Now I’ve changed, so you have to deal with that! I’m sure I can find some time to hang out with you, but Scott’s my boyfriend, I have my things with Matthew and the girls, I’m helping Matt with the Triwizard Tournament, I’ve got chess, _and_ I have to actually do schoolwork…so excuse me for not fitting in time for my wayward best friend who’s only just realised I’m interesting again! What?”, Albus found a sneer shape his lips as he watched Scorpius hold onto his wand in shaking anger, “what are you gonna do? Hex me again? Because you can’t bear to hear the truth?”

 

“I can’t believe how bitter you’ve turned”, Scorpius scorned with a curl of his lip. “I used to think you’d support me no matter what, but since Rose, you’ve never been interested in what I wanted, it’s always been you”. Scorpius shook his head and turned away slightly, relieving Albus briefly of the intensity of his glare. “You know, I really wanted us to sort things out today, but now you’ve turned so bitter and angry…”

 

“Well, it was your choices that made me bitter and angry, Scorp”, Albus shrugged with a faint nonchalance, not particularly feeling much of anything. He turned away from Scorpius and began walking back to the castle. “I’ve gotta get back to this lesson, Scorp…so if there’s nothing else…?”

 

“I’ll wait for you, Al”, Scorpius replied suddenly, ignoring Albus’s question entirely. Albus stopped in his tracks but did not turn round. “You waited for me to be done with kidding myself with Rose…to realise who my real priority is…whom I actually want to spend my life with…now it’s my turn to wait for you, until you figure it out for yourself”. Scorpius walked past Albus, the force of his gait swirling the faintest breeze past him as he marched down the stairs back to the dungeons. “Happy birthday for last week, by the way”, Scorpius called out faintly from the other end of the Atrium, making Albus’s heart shudder another level downwards. 

 

 _Whom I actually want to spend my life with_. 

 

Finally regaining some sort of conscious control over his faculties, Albus plodded back into the Great Hall absent-mindedly, almost being knocked into by an apparating Tara Gellar as he walked straight through her hoop. He ignored the shouts of the Apparating instructor as he took his place up by his hoop once more, but simply stood there dully, not paying attention. 

 

“You alright, Al?”, Scott patted him on the shoulder softly as he spoke in his ear. “You look out of it”.

 

“Yeah”, Albus replied in a monotone. “I’m fine”. 

 

***

February passed distantly, as though Albus was watching it on a huge projector on a faraway hill. He couldn’t feel it, couldn’t sense it; he tried reaching out to it, grabbing out to something, anything. But it slipped through his fingers like a veil, like the people around him were ghosts in a silent film. 

 

It was all Scorpius’s fault, of course. Whenever Albus snapped out of his comatose gait for just a moment or two, he felt the anger and frustration and the unwanted prickle of interest and hope slice through his mind with steak-knife precision. _Whom I actually want to spend my life with. Whom I actually want to spend my life with._ Albus writhed in his bed every night, the most he managed to feel all month even without being awake. Normally, the comfortable, bear-hug presence of Scott sleeping dreamlessly next to him in the Room of Requirement (Albus definitely owed James for letting him borrow the Invisibility Cloak…) would keep him lulled, keep him in a haze of security and cosiness; but February had split the bed straight down the middle, and suddenly Albus couldn’t pass a night without waking up with his head tortured by darkness and dreams of running and finding light, like after Scorpius had hexed him after the Slug Club party. But how did Albus know what that light was, who it represented? All Albus did know was that was the most feeling he had felt all month. 

 

March ushered itself in a sea of daffodils in the Great hall, trumpeting the onslaught of spring with a decidedly Welsh twist. Albus didn’t notice the blinding sunshine from the enchanted ceiling as he plodded down the Ravenclaw table, picking up the coffee pot with a wayward arm and setting down next to Daphne and Ellie. 

 

“Who rattled your cage this morning?”, Daphne raised an eyebrow at Albus, who had barely registered her mild-mannered bite over his distracted clamour for the nearest mug. “Albus?”, she started clicking her fingers up to Albus’s nose, putting a folded copy of the _Prophet_ with a small slam. “Albus!”

 

“Cut it out”, Albus swatted the hand away, dropping to the bench below him with a thud that sent the faintest of satisfying jolts up his spine. _Anything to feel anything at all…_ “I’m fine, nothing’s wrong…just slept badly again, is all…”

 

“Scott must be a right kicker in bed”, Ellie snickered as she took her teacup to her mouth, only to be silenced into sheepish quiet with a flicker of Albus’s glare. “And you wonder why they sorted you into Slytherin…”

 

 _‘Hell hath no fury like an Albus scorned!’_ , Albus remembered Scorpius teasing him one time when Albus had flipped out after having found Scorpius’s belongings vandalised by some fifth years in Albus’s second year. He hadn’t been able to see it before, blinded by his own lack of self-worth and inner strength. Now, he felt his glare crystallise like glass around his eyelids to the point that he almost impressed himself. 

 

“Scott sleeps still enough”, Albus wasn’t lying. “I’m just knackered, really…”

 

“Happy St. David’s Day!”, Matthew’s chant scraped along Albus’s eardrums in a screeching howl, his usual slight South Walian lilt in maximum overdrive as he handed Albus a daffodil from the vase next to him. Albus took one look at it and threw it limply next to his plate. “Wow, that must have been some pretty awful sex last night for that face…”

 

“My mood is not intrinsically linked to how good I am at shagging Scott!”, Albus snapped, almost throwing the knut in the Prophet owl’s eye as he grabbed for his own copy of the _Prophet_. “Am I not just allowed to have had a shitty night’s sleep?”

 

“And how many shitty nights’ sleep has that been in a row now…?”, Ellie retorted. “Because thirty-five must be some sort of record…”

 

“We are worried about you, mate!”, Matthew’s tone was a little more sympathetic, if not still dripping in the sing-song of the valleys. “You’ve not been the same since the Apparating lesson…”

 

“And I’m telling you guys that I’m fucking _fine_ ”, Albus growled with a menace he wished he didn’t possess. “And we know you’re Welsh, Matt, but that accent is fooling no-one”. Albus decided to try and diffuse his anger by throwing Matthew’s daffodil at him, but managed to miss entirely and watch it fall limply to the floor in a shower of laughter from the Gryffindor table. With another exasperated growl, he took to his feet with a grunt and stormed off. The yellowness of the flowers and the enchanted sun above scratched at his vision, making Albus squint at the door intently.

 

An arm grabbed him around the other side of the Great Hall doors, almost pinning him to the uneven stone wall. 

 

“Don’t make me do another Potter intervention”, Lily frowned as Albus struggled to catch his breath. “Because I will, Al. You’ve been acting so strange recently, and it’s noticeable”.

 

“Why can’t everyone just leave well enough alone?”, Albus brushed himself down and turned to leave once more. Lily outstretched her hand around Albus’s arm, pulling him back with a reluctant grunt. “What the fuck do you want, Lil’?”

 

“To know what the fuck is going on with you”, Lily countered candidly. “And…Scott spoke to me a couple of days ago”.

 

“What…?”, Albus’s voice dropped to a disconcerted murmur. “Why’s he worried for?”

 

“He says you guys aren’t speaking much when you’re hanging out, like you’re really distant and he can’t seem to connect with you…Albus, what are you doing?”

 

“I don’t know”, Albus shrugged, knowing exactly what nine-word sentence had been strangling him to confusion for so long. “I wish he wouldn’t worry so much, my feelings haven’t changed in the slightest”.

 

It wasn’t a lie, not really. Albus’s heart still leapt at the sight of Scott walking towards him, beaming at Albus’s presence as he greeted his boyfriend with a kiss and a good-natured jibe. Albus still felt a rush of affection every time they managed to sneak off to the Room of Requirement and Albus would wake up in the morning next to a snoozing Scott; Scott’s quiff would hang limply over his face like a light brown curtain over his face, the very tip being blown gently by his tiny snores. Albus had spent a couple of nights alone in his four-poster with the curtains drawn, trying to imagine himself unceremoniously dumping Scott to his face to figure out if he really cared that much. To his surprise, he felt his heart lurch at the sudden possibility of never being able to hold him again, not having his confidence nor his counsel, never hearing his laugh or his voice again. The second time he tried it, he legitimately had to throw up a little, running to the loo to vomit before he did it on his crisp, white bedsheets. He was truly in too deep.

 

But what if? The curiosity lingered; truth be told, it had never left. Albus’s lips tingled with the sensation in his mind of Scorpius’s lips brushing his with the lightest of the caresses. Albus’s fingers would hold Scorpius’s thick white-blond hair as they deepened the kiss, their gaze focussed in a tunnel of passion and bottled-up affection. Albus wondered what sex with Scorpius was like. With Scott, it had grown tender and warm, like cough syrup or the warmest fireplace lapping at his bare skin with the softest embrace. Albus betted that sex with Scorpius would be rampant, considering they had spent so much time drowning in their unrequited affections. His mind seared with the possibility of rolling roughly along the mattress, their sighs and their moans harmonising into a symphony of synchronised passion before the motion’s denouement, the climax long and so, so intense. 

 

Albus knew Scorpius inside and out (well, maybe not so much inside just yet…). Scorpius could read Albus like a book. They knew each other’s pet peeves, their innermost desires, their many emotions. They had been the original jigsaw pieces before the set had been scrambled and Albus had had to branch out to those other pieces of identical blue sky. Albus imagined the curvature of Scorpius’s hand filling in each and every crevice of Albus’s palm perfectly, as though their parting had been some sort of continent drift returning full circle. Maybe it was meant to be. Maybe Albus had to branch out to see what he wanted, to see what he needed. 

 

But he didn’t need Scorpius. Maybe he didn’t even want him. But the prickle of interest, the spark of new desire, of new possibilities…now that burned brightly inside the most wicked caves of his gut. Albus prayed to Merlin that it would leave him be so that he could enjoy falling hopelessly in love with the boy he knew he really wanted. 

 

No amount of magic could quell the restless itch of greener grass.

 

“Well, make sure you let him know that, eh?”, Lily placed a sympathetic hand on her big brother’s shoulder before releasing him from her intense stare. “Go out with him to Hogsmeade this week, remind yourself what you’re missing out on”.

 

“Maybe”, Albus grimaced with a thin smile. “I’ll go ask him”.

 

“Great”, Lily looked relieved. “Because you and Scott are endgame, you know. He’s husband material…”

“I’m seventeen, Lil’”, Albus poked her in the shoulder at such a thought. “I’m way too long off to be even thinking of that…”

 

“Mum and Dad got married when they were twenty”, Lily pouted wryly. “So did Uncle Ron and Aunt Hermione…and they’re so happy now…”

 

“Just let me try and sort things out with him first before you send out the wedding invitations…” Albus waved his hands hastily before flashing an uncertain but grateful glance at his sister. “Thanks for talking to me, though”.

 

“No problem, future Mr Phillips…”, Lily squealed as she dodged Albus’s arm-slap. _Future Mr Phillips…_ For the first time in a month, Albus felt the intoxicating wave of Scorpius’s words fizzle into thin air in a glorious crackle. 

 

***

 

“Anyone would think that you were trying to butter me up, Potter”, Scott rumbled with the faintest apprehension as they stepped into the precocious warmth of early spring, the sun dappling the back of their necks with a soft massage. “Swear you’ve never been so affectionate recently”.

 

“I simply aim to please”, Albus smirked, taking Scott’s cool hand as they walked under the blossoming trees, white petals falling around them like confetti. _Fuck off, Lily…_ “Besides, we didn’t get to do much last month so I thought we could do with going out”.

 

“I’m not complaining”, Scott smiled tightly, Albus letting the affection lap him like a lazy tide. “I was beginning to think you were getting a bit bored, to be honest…”

 

“Of course I wasn’t, mate”, Albus brushed his shoulder lightly against Scott’s, feeling guilty for withholding the entire business of Scorpius’s cryptic messages. “I was just distracted by work and sleeping really badly…I’m sorry if I made you feel as though things were going to shit”. 

 

“Well, you’re here now”. Scott’s remark flashed through Albus like an unexpected paper-cut. Albus looked to Scott’s beaming face, but inside his eyes, he could see the tiniest seeds of doubt taking root in his deep, deep gaze. _Does he know? How can he? Me and Scorpius haven’t even spoken since that time when…_ Albus bit his lip in trepidation for nothing in particular and kept walking on. 

 

—-

 

Perhaps the ability to have the most captivating of inane conversations was what Albus appreciated the most about relationships. They hadn’t even popped into the Three Broomsticks or Honeydukes to give them something to do without having to think of a new conversation topic. Hand in hand, the pair of them meandered through the tight village streets, their bubble passing the brightly coloured awnings and freshly designed shop displays by without even the smallest consideration.

 

 _Future Mr Phillips_. Albus couldn’t help thinking about it. The notion was preposterous; they were at least five years off anything like that, if not more. He was only seventeen; for all he knew, he might find ‘the One’ for another fifty years, or maybe even never. But every time he tried to even question the thought in his head, he grew ever more aware of the water tight bubble that encased the two of them as they wandered aimlessly down the cobbled streets of Hogsmeade. His mind sparked with the thought of waking up every morning to that same messy bed hair, that same snoozing smirk, that same all-encompassing bear hug. His hands and legs itched to move forward, to embark on a life beyond Hogwarts into the adult world, but together. 

 

He couldn’t let himself get ahead of himself - he really shouldn’t. There was no guarantee this could ever work out beyond Hogwarts. They had never spent copious amounts of time alone together; they had never shared a dormitory together. Wasn’t there supposed to be a honeymoon phase anyway, where these sorts of forever feelings were normal but ultimately temporary? Albus hoped they would stay, at least in some sort of muted form. He wondered if that was how these sorts of destined pairings eventually went: the warmest and brightest passion that he could possibly think of, turning, over time, into the laziest and most satisfying of Indian summers. 

 

Albus was going to tell Scorpius. Tell him that he could wait a million months for Albus to come running to his arms, to his love. It wasn’t happening. Albus had made his mind up, had changed his life, picked himself off the floor after Scorpius had gotten with Rose. Now Albus was going to do the same for a change - look after number one. Making the mental note to tell Scorpius the next time he saw him, Albus heaved a determined sigh and brought himself back to his surroundings with an erratic blink.

 

They had stopped by the fields that led back out towards the school grounds, the wetness of the morning drizzle still coating the grass and the weeds with an angelic sheen under the beating spring sun. The sun itself had moved from its strong southern position since they had first left the castle; Albus couldn’t quite believe that the surrounding sky had already started to turn purple, easing the sun into a slow and sleepy decline into slumber. 

 

Next to him, Scott had suddenly stopped next to a rock, bending down to tie his shoelaces. Albus cocked his head inquisitively as he walked back up to where his boyfriend was tending to his shoes. 

 

“You know you’ve got like, you know, a wand to do that shit?”, Albus remarked lightly. 

 

“Sometimes the beauty of being a Muggle-born is actually appreciating putting a little bit of effort into your life”, Scott muttered back, not looking down. 

 

“Oh, okay”, Albus scratched his head, nonplussed by Scott’s sudden attitude swing. “Well, I guess it’s good exercise, I suppose”.

 

“Yeah, I guess so”, Scott tied his second shoe into a bow and lifted his head again. Albus held out his hand but it hung limply in the six inches of space that yawned between them. “Come on, let’s get back to the castle”, Scott added, picking up the pace a little against Albus’s still slumbering stroll. 

 

“Oh…okay”, Albus repeated, kicking off from the ground to lightly jog back up to Scott’s side. Hadn’t today gone well? Albus suddenly felt the cold from before return, that February medusoid chill that ached his bones and his limbs to stone at every wave of emotional malaise that swept through him. Had the sunlight tricked him? Lulled him into a false sense of security? Had he totally ignored some sort of signal that Scott was trying in vain to send him? Was he just oblivious? Albus remembered the slightest of slights on their way into Hogsmeade, but that hadn’t meant anything. Albus had misinterpreted it, been too paranoid. 

 

But what about the conversations they had just shared? Albus had never felt quite so intimate with Scott before, not even in bed together. The afternoon that had just passed seemed to confirm everything Lily had been alluding to the other day; that they did fit, that they didn’t need any adventures or gimmicks or distractions to make them work. Life could be normal and simultaneously exhilarating, just from spending time with each other. Why Scott had just turned Arctic was making Albus’s head turn dizzy through over-thinking. 

 

To Albus’s surprise, it was Scott who broke the tension as they reached the steps to the castle doors. Albus had taken to keeping his mouth shut lest he somehow made the situation worse with a witty observation or slightest remark. Turning on Albus as they stood over the arch, Scott cleared his throat, “Look…I’m not you. I’m not the most oblivious person in the world, I do notice a couple of things -“, Albus went to open his mouth to disagree, before shutting it of his own accord. “It’s not like the last month hasn’t been weird…”

 

“I know, but I’m past it”, Albus tried to reassure him, but Scott avoided his eye contact with a sweeping glance to the stone floor. “I’ve slept like shit, I’ve had work on…I let our time together slip too much, I know. But I spoke to Lily and she put my priorities straight, I swear!”

 

“But that’s not the only person that you spoke to in the last month, is it”, Scott laughed humourlessly, lifting his gaze into Albus’s with the heaviest of tugs. Albus could suddenly see the tormented confusion in those earthy brown eyes for the first time; they were clear as day and Albus felt the strongest pull of guilt push his shoulders down and his head to the floor in shame. “Don’t tell me that you haven’t been in this funk for ages because of what you were talking about with Scorpius”.

 

“Scorpius can go to Hell”, Albus choked, unsureness burning his throat. “Scorpius thought he could wander back into my life after making his priorities very clear with Rose. As far as I’m concerned, he’s pretty low on the list of my priorities right now”.

 

“Then why don’t I believe you?”, Scott grimaced, looking away again. “When you came back from your ‘chat’ -“, Albus almost recoiled at the ferocity of Scott’s spit of that word, “- you were so out of it that the instructor had to send you to the hospital wing. And then…you just weren’t the same after that, for a whole month. It was like something was tormenting you inside, something he told you or admitted to you that you just couldn’t shake off. I’m not here to be your plaything, Al, I’ve told you that before -“

 

“You’re not my fucking plaything!”, Albus spat back, more in contempt of how Scorpius was making him act than Scott’s disappointment in him. “I’ve told _you_ that before as well! I’m one-hundred percent in for this, Scott! Scorpius might have said a few things, but he was so cryptic that it really wasn’t anything to worry about -“

 

“Except you spent a whole month brooding about it”, Scott scoffed. “And so you admit that Scorpius had admitted it!”

 

“Not exactly…he said he knew whom he wanted to spend his li-time with”, Albus cursed himself mentally for lying, but it was too late to go back now, “and that he would wait for me to come to my senses! Except now the joke’s on him, because I have come to my senses…and I know who I’d rather spend my time with…”. Albus reached out his hand into the silence, hoping that Scott would inch closer to him and that Albus could hold his hand. Scott remained rooted to the opposite wall, refusing to acknowledge the hand at all. “What can I do to convince you that me and Scorpius are done? Because you wouldn’t believe me even if I publicly humiliated the bastard!”

 

“That’s the thing”, Scott sniffed. “I don’t think there is anything you can do. I gave you that chance when we were on the steps after the last time you two talked…and now what do I do?”

 

“If there’s anything I can do to protect what we have”, Albus swallowed, braving the gulf of steps required to put his shaking hand to Scott’s cheek, “I’d do it for you”.

 

Albus almost jumped in his own skin when Scott reciprocated, his soft, large hand resting closely to Albus’s own cheekbone. “Just give me a bit of time, Al”, he smiled sadly. “I really want to believe you”.

 

“I’ll be there waiting for you”, Albus smiled tightly. “However long it takes”.

 

“Okay”, Scott sighed through his nose and turned to face the darkening Atrium. “I’ll see you around, Al”. With a final look over his shoulder and another sad smile, he strode over to the Grand Staircase and out of sight. Albus was alone again. 

 

***

 

April cloaked the entire school in Triwizard fever once more, the final challenge being the only thing buzzing through corridors and dinner tables and common rooms like a swarm of bees. Durmstrang and Beauxbatons had returned back to their schools after the second challenge in order to get some teaching in before the final challenge took place, and suddenly the grounds had a distinctly continental feel once more. Smorgasbords of Swedish delicacies lined the baguettes and pickled snail soups that filled the grand Hogwarts dinner tables. A group of Beauxbaton Veela hexed a group of seventh-year Durmstrang and Hogwarts students for staring too much. Albus’s head hurt from the mix of languages around the place, choosing instead to occupy himself with the crosswords of the _Daily Prophet_ until Matthew and the girls eventually managed to find him.

 

“I can’t wait until we finally get our roast dinners and toads in the hole back”, Albus grumbled, eyeing the Swedish meatball on his fork with unenthusiastic curiosity. “There’s only so much novelty a man can take”. 

 

“If I see another effing baguette in the rest of my sorry life…”, Matthew growled, throwing his backside on the bench with a thud. “This whole year has been a shitstorm of worrying and near-death experiences…”

 

“But you’re so close to winning the Tournament, Matt”, Daphne looked at Matt with the faintest look of shock hugging her eyelids. “Du Bois dropping out of the second round like that, you taking the win…you were…like…amazing!”. The right corner of Albus’s lips curled in amusement as he caught Daphne looking for slightly too long before looking away again. 

 

“Yeah”, Ellie flashed a similar glance of amusement back at Albus. “You’ve done _really_ well, Matt…you’ve made us all well proud”.

 

Matthew blushed into his cinnamon buns, too red to reply except for a small flash of gratitude to Daphne. 

 

“Is there anything we can do to help you prepare for tomorrow?”, Albus asked. “Any more clues to decipher? Any skills to sharpen?”

 

“There’s no clue”, Matthew shrugged, Albus watching his embarrassment filtering out of his gaze as he remembered the next day’s events in his eyes. “So who fucking knows?”

 

“Then just get a good night’s sleep”, Albus tried smiling back, but his disappointment held him back from feeling as though he had meant it. He’d been hoping to distract himself, plunge him into any sort of activity that didn’t involve either schoolwork or worrying about Scott. Work made Albus think about things he’d rather be doing, which made him think about the time he and Scott had made a pillow fort in the Hufflepuff common room on a lazy, empty Sunday. When they leant into the pillows in the shade of the pillow awning and they cuddled and forgot about work and the outside world and just were.

 

“How am I supposed to do that when I don’t even know what the hell I’m doing tomorrow?”, Matthew whined again, limply throwing his fork to his plate with muted frustration. “What if I die tomorrow, Al? What if I fall from a broom? Or a spell backfires? Or I get eaten by a spider?”

 

“McGonagall’s taken all the security measures she’s thought necessary, Matt”, Albus rumbled back. “It’s going to be fine. Just do your best”.

 

“I heard the Minister was gonna make an appearance”, Ellie mentioned, visibly thinking of ways to steer the attention of the conversation from Matthew. “Do you know if your dad’s gonna be there, Al?”

 

“Merlin’s beard, no”, Albus scoffed. “After everything that’s happened, I think if he sees another Triwizard Tournament again, it’ll be several lifetimes too soon…”

 

“True”, Ellie shrugged apologetically. She took a side look at Matthew, who was now conspicuously shaking over his mash. “I definitely couldn’t have put my name in the Goblet, though. I think you were bloody brave to do that, Matt, let alone actually do the challenges and bloody winning one!”

 

Matthew took to his feet all of a sudden with the scraping of the bench, everyone looking around to the Ravenclaw table. “I…I think I’m gonna be sick…”

 

Albus watched him scarper down the long tables and out into the Atrium. He put his hands on the table ready to push himself to his own feet and after Matthew, but Ellie put her hand out over Albus’s, adding, “I think he wants some time away from the attention, Al. Go check on him in a bit”. 

 

Albus nodded, relaxing his haunches back for a split second before he made eye contact across the crowded hall. For all the different ways Albus could encounter Scott around the castle - in classes, in conversations with mutual friends - Albus had decided that this was the very worst; not because he found it intimidating or frightening, but because it was like nothing had changed between them. Scott still looked at him with the same soft round eyes that he had before, untouched by the cat-scratch scars of jealousy that tore through them on the steps of the castle before. And Albus felt thoroughly entranced, as though he was being cradled by Scott’s gaze into a soft waking slumber, his mouth gaping at the drooling mess below. It teased Albus, taunted him, chastised him for his decisions, his actions, their consequences. 

 

And then they finally flashed away. The lump in Albus’s throat became a choking hazard and Albus started coughing, aimlessly groping the air in front of the goblet of water in front of him. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Ellie tut at a still-daydreaming Daphne before thrusting the water in his open mouth. Albus took to the goblet from her with both hands, tipping it back so that he couldn’t even look in Scott’s direction anymore. 

 

The goblet remained so for the longest heartbeats Albus could imagine. He was a lot safer like this; he dared to open his eyes once more and peer into the dark curved shadow of the cup. It comforted him a little, as though he was watching far into space from the dark side of the moon, unaffected by the joy and heartbreak of light. He could just stare out into endless darkness, untouched beauty, not yet jaded by the realities of disappointment in the face of happiness. 

 

After what seemed like half an hour, he realised how stupid he must have looked and put the goblet back on the table. Instead of looking into Ellie and Daphne’s concerned glances, he met eyes once more across the crowded hall, but this time into the most icily refreshing of glances. Scorpius had always had that affect on Albus; when Albus had found himself looking into his best friend’s eyes, it was always as though he was taking a cold shower in a sweltering heatwave. It cleansed him, washed away all the evils of people’s taunts and mockery in a smooth stream of icy blue. They burned into the space between them like the eyes of a cat, focussed and unblinking at the object of their concentration. 

 

What surprised Albus most was the emotions that swirled in the snowstorm of his gaze. Albus might have expected pain to roll in waves from Scorpius, rejection radiating like a dull, lukewarm ache. But his eyelids were round and open, as though they were…optimistic. Scorpius had an air of quiet confidence, safe in the knowledge that Albus would come back to him. Albus didn’t know whether to pity him or scoff; if their conversation had shown him anything, it was that Scorpius could never be good for Albus like that, that there was just too much emotion and too much water under the bridge to revisit that. The flicker of determination to reject Scorpius once and for all ignited itself again in Albus’s stomach. He had to prove to Scott that this was the end, that Scott was always number one. 

 

Albus had more courage to break the eye contact this time and shook himself in his spot as he noticed Daphne and Ellie looking at him as though he were a zoo animal. Albus shrugged sheepishly. “Pass us the cinnamon buns, eh, Daph?”

 

***

 

If Albus had found the crowds of the first challenge to be colossal, he found the crowds of the third challenge to be nothing short of claustrophobic. People were spilling out from all corners of the throng, and the stands that had been erected from the Great Lake all the way up to the castle doors were already full to bursting. Of course, Albus had arrived fashionably late, leaving him standing bored rigid in the long queues up to the stands. He gave a frustrated sigh at his own lack of punctuality and set about fidgeting in his pockets. 

 

He had grown to hate these pockets of free time. Nothing to occupy himself, nothing to distract him from the emotional mess that was his oversaturated mind. Every time he found himself completely alone with his thoughts and insecurities, he felt his brain charge up into overdrive. He felt the cogs and wheels of his mind grind and whirl erratically and he almost had to sit down to regain some control over his breathing before his head exploded entirely. He knew that his physical efforts in winning back Scott could only ever go so far; if Scott couldn’t believe that he was over Scorpius, that the past remained firmly in the past, it was over. And that was something that Albus simply could not compute. 

 

Albus supposed that the saving grace of the situation had been the weather; if truth be told, he didn’t think he could remember a warmer April. He wished he could enjoy the beating heat that had thrown everyone out of the castle into the bath of warmth that saturated the grounds. He had sat out with Matthew and the girls one Friday afternoon after classes, parchment leant against heavy books, backs leant against ancient trees. Albus had much rather stayed in the castle, away from people’s ostentatious displays of blissful happiness being rubbed unceremoniously in his face; however, he felt a need to indulge Ellie’s sighs of longing out of the library window - after all, Albus was the most considerate and attentive friend they could ever have…

 

At least Albus could say that he had been able to feel things again; if anything, he was the most sure of his feelings that he ever could be. He had spent the past month working on his frustration, working on his anger and upset in order to build the courage to confront Scorpius. If he was being honest, his courage fluctuated constantly - particularly if he had reached a point where he was practically inches from marching up to Scorpius and telling him. The moment he felt himself about to do it, the freeze began to set back in; could he take breaking Scorpius’s heart like that? Could he take the look on his face? The faltering of his smile? The dullness of his eyes? Then Albus felt himself sit back down to think about something else. 

 

No. It had to be today. 

 

It had to be today. 

 

Flinging his fidgeting hands out of his pockets, he stood on tiptoes in his place in the queue, desperately searching for the familiar bob of blond hair amongst the thousands of supporters that surrounded him. _Fuck_. They all looked the same! Even the hair colours that looked vastly different seemed to mesh into a general brown blob. Feeling the itch to run, Albus took to his feet, dodging deftly through the throng of surprised faces as he searched for a lanky blond. 

 

 _That_ lanky blond.

 

There he was, in the distance. 

 

“Scorpius!”

 

Scorpius turned Albus’s way from where he was standing in the queue. “Albus?” 

 

Albus’s running begot Scorpius’s and suddenly, they were running at each other like bulls underneath the scaffolds of the grandstands, away from the watching people. Albus felt his heart seize in apprehension as he began to slow down, the faraway Scorpius splodge having grown into legs and arms and a torso as Albus came to a stop. 

 

But Scorpius did not slow down. “Albus”. With razor-sharp precision, Scorpius slowed minimally into the tightest of embraces around Albus’s shoulders, rigid in shock. Seemingly without thought, Scorpius moved his head to in front of Albus’s face and moved forward. Their lips touched. Suddenly, Albus felt his heart give out entirely and he was freefalling. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took a little longer than I had anticipated! I don't think it'll ever be exactly how I want it, but the content's what I wanted, so here you go, a new chapter! I hope you enjoyed it, let me know what you thought in the comments! Unless I think an epilogue is required, the next chapter will be the last! Thanks for reading, guys! :)


	8. Sixth Degree (Part II): Reconciliation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Scorpius kisses Albus.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, yeah, so you guys definitely have earnt an apology from me - didn't quite think that my life would be as busy as it has been, especially because this has been sat on my laptop for quite a while now. I was hoping to finish it with Chapter 8, but I think I'm going to need another chapter. Thought I'd just upload this at least to answer some of your questions! Hope some of you are still here, enjoy the chapter!

_“(Note: If the witch or wizard chooses to reconcile with their former lover, beware; both must be ready to part with the past. Do_ **_not_ ** _attempt reconciliation if feelings persist).”_

 

_***_

 

Albus’s lips suddenly froze in their half-open stupor, paralysed by the force of the energy rushing from Scorpius’s kiss. His eyes were like a rabbit’s, caught in the headlights of Grandpa Weasley’s Ford Anglia, drawn as he was to Scorpius’s soft but purposeful gaze. Albus felt himself drowning painlessly, falling down and down and down past the icy cracks of blue-grey that surrounded him. 

 

This was it. 

 

This was _it_. 

 

Scorpius loved him. Well, maybe not loved him. Liked him. Enough to kiss him. Enough to do it in public, out loud, in front of three schools and all the parents and the Minister for Magic. Albus felt the faintest flicker of desire stroke his lungs. All bar his lips was transported to those idle Sunday afternoons of yesteryear, of exploding snap and companionship against that evil adolescent world. He felt his fingertips crackle with the comfort of Scorpius’s breath under his nose, immaculately refreshed as it was with peppermint toothpaste. 

 

What would become of them now? Was this kismet? Was this meant to be all this time? Albus had been told about the prophecies of the Department of Mysteries, how the most revered Seers would scan the stars for the future’s distant sparkle, bottling them in orbs for future reference. He wondered if some far-flung Seer had seen this. _ASP and SHM to be forever lovers, come what may._

 

Would there be long, cosy walks through fields? Would there be the most raucous sex that Albus had imagined for the first few weeks? Would they last? Would they be forever? Albus had hoped so long ago, hoped that the bond that they shared would only be strengthened by that last step, that final move towards a forever that he was happy with. 

 

Albus regained control of his mouth, ajar in its shock. He pushed back into the kiss slowly, feeling the cushion of resistance against the pillows of Scorpius’s pink lips. Albus closed his eyes, relying on simply his sense of touch to guide him onwards. He felt Scorpius place his long, thin fingers around the joint of Albus’s shoulder, pulling him somewhat further into the embrace. Albus felt his nose brush against Scorpius’s as Scorpius turned his head and all of a sudden, Albus could feel Scorpius’s rapid heartbeat pounding frantically against his ribcage. It hit him squarely in the chest like a sucker punch, winding Albus out of his imagination and back into the real world. 

 

Albus pulled away. Scorpius’s presence felt bitter on his lips, as though Scorpius had poured salt on Albus’s slug-like mouth in a frenzied attempt to kill them. He blinked, not understanding how his body didn’t seem to want to match up with his mind. He wanted Scorpius, he wanted Scorpius all along. Of course, he wanted Scorpius. There was no contest. Scorpius was it. They had been through so much, so much more than Albus had been through with Scott. Hadn’t they?

 

For the most bizarre of reasons, Albus thought of James and what it might be like to kiss him. Staring into his brother’s thicketed brown eyes, pressing against the perennially chapped skin of his bottom lip. Immediately, he wished he hadn’t, almost physically recoiling from even the notion. His imagination tasted as bitter as his reality with Scorpius had been. Bitter-tasting…

 

“It’s like kissing my brother!”, Albus burst out suddenly, scaring Scorpius half to death in a somersault. “Kissing you…it’s like kissing my brother….”

 

“Al…?”, Scorpius’s smile dropped considerably. “What are you…?”

 

Albus wasn’t listening. He had to find Scott. “I…I…I’m sorry, Scorp, I’ve gotta go…I’ve gotta go find…” He left the rest of his sentence with his best friend as he took to his feet once more, dodging the stands’ wooden pillars before finding the blinding sunshine again. Gasps and tuts of indignation trailed Albus behind him, Albus pushing past through the long queue of waiting students and parents to find him. He squinted his eyes in determination, scanning hysterically for any sort of opening to get up into the stands to look for him. Fuck. Nothing. 

 

A glimmer of a broom caught his attention out of the corner of his eye and suddenly Albus was running towards it, devoid of all rational thought. He picked it up as if it was the most natural thing in the world to do and gritted his teeth. Kicking up from the ground, the squeals of disbelief around him fell on deaf ears. Scott, Scott, Scott. He squinted again, struggling to find that familiar quiff of chocolate brown hair that betrayed his ex-boyfriend’s presence through the sea of blond, red, and brown below. 

 

Albus felt himself getting more and more desperate, the cries and jeers of the crowd below beginning to seep through into his consciousness. He swooped closer and closer to the castle, descending a little more in order to get a better look at the faces flashing past.

 

“Get the fuck down, Albus!”

  
Albus braked, almost throwing himself off of the front of the broom and onto the people below. He looked around slowly over his shoulder, big brown eyes staring with a soft exasperation back up at him. He dropped down slowly to him, a small circle forming around his landing spot with hushed tension. The broom dropped to the ground as Albus landed his feet opposite Scott’s, his ex-boyfriend’s face, in the mildest terms, vaguely nonplussed.

 

“It was like kissing my brother, Scott”. 

 

“What?” Scott shook his head, turning away his gaze with the faintest rush of red. 

 

“Scorpius kissed me, Scott”, Albus admitted, not looking away himself. 

 

Scott’s gaze snapped back up to hit Albus’s and Albus recoiled from the hurt that cut through his chest. 

 

“But it was like kissing my brother, Scott”, Albus pressed. “It was…it was just wrong, Scott. I never want to go back there. I wasn’t confused before…but now I’m definitely not confused”. Albus made a step forward but retreated when Scott visibly flinched. “I never stopped wanting us to be together”.

 

“But you were so obviously not over him, Al”, Scott shrugged. “I couldn’t trust you…how am I supposed to trust you now? I can’t be going through this again…”

 

“You don’t have to”, Albus pleaded. “Even if I go back to being friends with him again…I absolutely do not want to kiss him again, Scott. I only want to kiss you”.

 

Scott went silent and sighed. Albus felt sweat drip down his forehead as he waited for some sort of noise to come from the six-feet gulf ahead of him. Finally, it came with a shaky voice and stinging red eyes. “And what am I supposed to do now? Just go back to how it was?”

 

“We can see how it goes”, Albus offered his outstretched hand hopefully. “We can go as slow as you like…as long as I have a chance to show you that you can count on me”.

 

Albus felt his heart explode as Scott lifted his own hand and entwined his fingers between Albus’s, pulling Scott towards him. Scott moved his feet slowly, one in front of the other, forcing Albus’s heart to shoot into the curvature of his throat. 

 

“Okay”, Scott whispered with a smile. Albus smiled back but stayed rooted to the spot. With a yank, however, Scott pulled Albus into his other outstretched arm and enveloped Albus into his embrace, a wave of warmth rolling down Albus’s back in cautious bliss. Scott’s lips on Albus’s forehead almost made Albus jump back in surprise but he contained himself, focussing on how it was so very very right and so very very un-bitter. Albus’s anxieties finally came to peace.

 

“ _Potter! If you don’t give me a good explanation in the next ten seconds why you stole a Triwizard broom to kiss your boyfriend…_ ” 

 

The wolf-whistles and cheers that surrounded the boys died out with Headmistress McGonagall’s shrill shriek sounding across the stands. Albus and Scott parted with a jump, Albus flashing his gaze down to the floor. As he felt McGonagall’s presence chill his flesh and bones, he looked up for a moment back up to Scott’s amused look. The glint in Scott’s eye gave the slightest bit of warmth back to Albus’s frozen body. Whatever the punishment might be for this, it had been worth it. 

 

***

 

_10th July 2023_

_Godric’s Hollow, Somerset_

 

_Scottie,_

 

_Yes, I know you hate that nickname, but I’m so cripplingly bored being grounded that I need some conflict to keep me interested. I didn’t even think I could be grounded now, I’m almost eighteen! In any case, it was still worth it for getting you back, Scottie. I’m still counting down the days until you come over - just sixteen to go now! It’ll be nice just to spend time with you without having to write essays in between each kissing session…_

 

_As if to add insult to injury, I’ve got a postcard from Matt on his world trip from Japan. As if it weren’t enough that he’s absolutely loaded since he won the Triwizard Tournament, now he has to flee the continent because of all the media attention he’s attracted. Matt said at least three people have asked him out in the streets since he won… Daphne was not pleased, apparently! For some reason, he thinks that this broom he rode in the triathlon was lucky cos I rode it to find you, so he’s invited us out with Daph and Ellie when he hits the European leg. Could be a laugh?_

 

_James has an actual girlfriend and it’s thoroughly sickening. And surprising, actually… no word of a lie, Lil and me honestly thought he’d end up shacking up with Teddy Lupin. The amount of times I could have sworn they were making gooey eyes at each other since James came of age… maybe I’m just making it up in my head. Somehow I don’t think Dad would wrap his head around that. But yeah, he has a girlfriend now and the amount of PDA they get up to is ridiculous. I mean, we have the kind decency to do that sort of thing when we’re not surrounded by people who aren’t also doing it. James and Jasmin just sit on the sofa all day practising for the day they both become Dementors….it’s surprising either of them have a soul left between them, the amount of mouth sucking they’ve been doing. It only makes me miss you more._

 

_Lily’s aced her OWLs like we knew she would - eight Os and two Es. Aunt Hermione’s been cooing over her like Lil’s some sort of protégée, making sure she’s got all the updated textbooks and gets the best classes at Hogwarts next year. I think Lily’s more concerned about being Quidditch captain next year, to be totally honest. We’re still made up for her, though._

 

_Talking about Grangers… Rose was over last week. It was very strange, I have to say. She's never been known for being very shy… but when she saw me come down into the kitchen, she literally just ran off, as if she couldn’t even bear to look me in the eye. I know I ruined her relationship with Scorpius apparently but it didn’t even look as though she was angry. It was like she was…ashamed. I kinda want to speak to her when we get back to school if I don’t see her before. I think Scorpius was right when he said she was feeling some remorse for how things went between us. We’ve hardly spoken civilly since I was, like, eleven, but we used to be so close before. I don’t know where it went wrong, really. Maybe it’s time to bury the hatchet?_

 

_Anyway, enough about me. What about you? Enjoying Muggle Britain once more? I’ve tried watching some Muggle daytime television like you suggested and it was, quite honestly, the worst form of entertainment I had ever been subjected to. I mean, who cares about four people, who obviously hate each others’ guts, cooking for each other to see who’s the best? The worst thing was that I actually wanted to watch the next three episodes to see if Alan really was as good a host as he said he was. He wasn’t, Scottie. He wasn’t anything of the sort._

 

_How’s Sarah? Has she settled into her new job yet? I bet you miss her having around the house, hopefully the 26th will come around quickly! Give her my love for me, anyway. Hope your family are okay! Let me know about going with Matt on his trip and how you wanna get to ours. We can connect you up to the Floo Network again if you want, but if you wanna Apparate or use a Portkey, let us know._

 

_See you soon, mate._

 

_All my love,_

 

_Al._

 

***

 

_13th August 2023_

_Fiesca, Italy_

 

_Dear Potters!_

 

_Don’t worry, we’re fine! Just thought you’d want an update on our travels. I know you said every three days, Mum, but Byron was so exhausted from flying halfway across Europe and back that we thought we’d give him a rest for a few days here. No need for yesterday’s Howler, thank you very much!_

 

 _We’ve got into a nice routine out here now. We have breakfast, go out and see the sights during the day, and then come back late afternoon to laze around before going out for dinner. As I write, Scott’s out tanning himself with Ellie on the balcony of our hotel suite and Daph and Matt are sat on the sofa in the living room bit doing_ The Quibbler’s _crossword. I’m sat at the table on the balcony, looking out to the sea. It’s so blue, you wouldn’t believe it! Hopefully the pictures I’m enclosing do it some justice but you guys really have to come out here, it’s so beautiful._

 

_We’ve finished our Greek part of the tour now. Athens was so amazing! I never realised how much the ancient civilisations knew about magic! There were so many cool artefacts and oracles to see - I’ve brought back a few souvenirs! We did all the Muggle attractions as well. Watching Matt almost collapse in exhaustion after climbing the Acropolis was probably the highlight - what sort of Triwizard champion is he?! We love him, though and not just because he’s up a hundred thousand Galleons. Him and Daph are official now, so now it’s just poor Ellie fifth-wheeling every time it gets slightly romantic here._

 

_Italy is just as lovely. I can’t wait to check out all of the old Roman magic scholars and go to the Muggle monuments here. We’re staying in this little wizarding town called Fiesca for now, though. It’s this sort of resort town for all of the European wizarding community but it’s not particularly unspoilt. We’ve met some lovely German wizards our age doing the same thing as us, so we might meet up with them again when we get to France. For now, though, we’re going to spend two or three days here just to get our breath back from all the travelling. I think we’re gonna go down to the restaurants and bars down on the seafront and have a big celebration meal._

 

_Scott says hi as per, as do the others. I think we’re probably gonna get the train back to Platform 7 1/2 on the 28th so we’ve got enough time to get our stuff for Hogwarts before the start of term. Hope you’re all well! We’ll send another owl when we get to Rome on the 18th so that Byron can rest._

 

_Write soon!_

 

_Albus_

 

***

 

Scorpius was nowhere to be seen. On the morning after his final welcome feast, Albus had almost flinched at the sight of Scorpius’s untouched corner of the dormitory. He had flashed back momentarily to the times when Scorpius was still with Rose when it seemed as though he never slept in his dorm bed. But this time, the scratched wooden floor had been vacant of even Scorpius’s brown leather trunk that used to sit majestically at the foot of his four-poster. Albus had felt a hollow sense of emptiness. 

 

Now, two weeks into the start of their autumn term, Scorpius’s absence had begun to transform Albus’s emptiness into the faintest prick of worry. Scorpius had kept his distance from Albus and Scott after they had kissed underneath the grandstands at the Triwizard Tournament. After the Easter Holidays, Albus noticed that Scorpius would still be in bed well after he and Matthew were ready to go down to breakfast and that Scorpius would not be in bed by the time Albus himself had settled down to sleep. He hadn't even seen Scorpius in the Great Hall for mealtimes, normally impossible due to his friend’s unusually tall stature. Lessons had gone by without him, as had essays and deadlines. 

 

What upset Albus most was that nobody else seemed to have even noticed Scorpius was missing — or at least they didn’t care if they had. Matthew had mentioned it a couple of times over breakfast, but Albus’s friends seemed to have a strange grudge against Scorpius over everything that had happened between them. Albus had tried once or twice to get them to change their mind, but the conversation normally ended with a non-committal grunt from one of the girls whilst buttering their toast. 

 

On the second Friday of term, Albus had gone to breakfast before Matthew, hoping to get some peace from the rowdiness that was his own frustration at the others’ insouciance. Stepping down into the gleaming, sunlit hall, he had been glad to have come down alone for a change. The early hour had kept most of the students in their beds, still deep in slumber; those very few that had braved half past six’s heavy head blow were rewarded with the freshest bread rolls and the top picks of the fry-up buffet. 

 

Tossing an absent knut at the Prophet owl as he took a furled copy of the newspaper at its feet, his stomach rumbled at the sight and smell of the plates of freshly sizzling bacon sat waiting for him at the foot of the Slytherin table. He propped the rolled newspaper under his arm and fetched a plate from the middle of the table. He followed the delightful scent of grilled pork down to the bottom of the table, taking two buttered bread rolls for the bacon rolls he was going to make. He took four rashers, two for each roll, and a sausage for each for good measure. _Today’s Friday_ , Albus reasoned with himself. He still needed something to celebrate in the mundanity of school life. 

 

He looked up and had to look away again in shock. Rose was standing at the other end of the hall at the Gryffindor table, doing exactly the same thing that Albus had been doing. Albus looked down at his bacon for a moment before summoning the courage to look back at his cousin. They maintained eye contact for just a moment, the longest and shortest that Albus could remember. He thought he saw the corners of Rose’s eyes well slightly, her stubbornness keeping her rooted to the spot despite all of the emotion waiting to burst out of her. 

 

Suddenly, it did. With a clatter of her half-filled plate, Rose launched herself back towards the door of the Hall in a flurry of bedraggled, red locks. 

 

“Rose!” Albus suddenly felt his feet move towards the door, plate still in one hand with the other keeping his newspaper in place. “Rose! Wait! Rose!” He managed to catch her just before she had reached the door into the Atrium and she clutched onto the cold stone walls to stop herself from collapsing entirely. “Rose, this shit needs to end, for good. I can’t do this anymore”. Rose merely wiped the tears away from her puffed-up eye-sockets in a sniffling silence. “Rose, I’m sorry that it didn’t work out between you and Scorpius, I really am. I might have wanted to get in the way of it in the beginning, but I got over it, I moved past it. I got my own life back on track and I’m better for it. I’m sorry that Scorpius couldn’t see that —“

 

“But that was it, Al!” Rose squealed suddenly, almost making Albus drop his plate. “He only ever had eyes for you. It wasn’t until you had started seeing Scott Phillips that I noticed it properly. How he’d always talk about all the adventures you'd had together, how much he missed you, how much he wanted us all to get along again. I was stupid and blind to how much he was in love with you. But now… now it all seems such a waste of time, especially because you chose Scott instead of him. I feel so stupid…” she spluttered out again, tears falling down her burning red cheeks as she sunk down to the floor.

 

“Shhhh”, Albus settled his plate on the floor as he followed Rose to the cold ground, putting a comforting arm around her shoulder and pulling her in. “You weren’t stupid, you were just caught up in something bigger. You loved him, didn’t you?” Albus felt Rose nod weakly into his chest. “If it makes you feel any better, Scorpius would always talk about you to me. He would tell me how I was wrong about you, how I should give our friendship another go. I really do think Scorpius was very torn”.

 

“I wish he’d just been honest with you at the start”, Rose sniffled snottily. “If he had been honest, you two would be together, I would never have fallen for him… everyone would have been so much happier…”

 

Albus thought about this for a moment. “I don’t think I would have, Rose”.

 

“But you were so upset when we got together…?”

 

“Yeah, I was”, Albus sighed. “But the fact that I had to push through, find a new way to be happy, it made me really become myself, y’know? I would never have become as confident as I am today if I hadn’t had to put myself out there. I would never have gotten Scott, I would never have made my new friends that I have. I know it definitely doesn’t feel like it now, Rose, but maybe this is something you have to master as well to come away even stronger”.

 

Rose brought her freckled face up from Albus’s chest and blinked. “Al…what happened to us, Al? We used to be so close… we’d do everything together… we’d finish each other’s sentences. How did we let this happen, Al? Was I that bad a friend?”

 

Albus said nothing, not wanting to agree with Rose out loud. He merely squeezed her closer with the arm that remained wrapped around her shoulder. “I think we let the split between our Houses get the best of us, Rose. I remember how upset you were that I had been sorted into a different House to you, how you thought that it meant we couldn’t be friends anymore. I remember you told me that the Sorting Hat had basically replaced you with Scorpius or something like that…”

 

“Oh God”, Rose held her hands up to her ears and cringed. “And I’ve let that get to me all this time? A stupid eleven-year-old thing to think?”

“We both could have done something about it, Rose”, Albus gritted his teeth, not sure if he believed what he was coming out with. “Maybe I did feel so alienated from you guys in Gryffindor that I let myself cut myself off from the rest of you. Your world felt so different to mine… you guys were all so popular and I was a total loser…”

 

“I never thought you were a loser, Al”, Rose sniffed and jumped in her seat slightly at Albus’s quizzical expression. “I thought you were stupid a lot of the time; I thought you were selfish and reclusive, out to make things awkward for people because you didn’t quite fit in the same way. But I never thought you were a loser. You’ve got too much potential and good inside you to be a loser”.

 

Albus felt practically black and bruised from Rose’s backhanded compliments, not entirely sure if she was still having a dig or not. 

 

Rose continued regardless, not waiting for Albus to catch his breath. “What I’m saying Al is… I’m…” Rose looked like she was going to choke on the word she couldn’t quite have pass her lips, “…s-s-sorry. There”. 

 

Albus rolled his eyes, surprising himself with the amount of affection laced in his annoyance. He squeezed Rose’s shoulder once more, pulling her in. “I’m sorry, too”. He looked down at her, Rose looking back up also with red, puffy eyes. “Friends?”

 

“Friends”, Rose smiled weakly. “Finally”.

 

“Finally”, Albus agreed with a matching smile, that old grudge melting off his back like the September sun. “Say… I hate to bring him up again… but have you seen Scorpius around at all since we got back? I’m starting to get a bit worried…”

 

“He’s gone on an exchange this term”, Rose sighed sadly. “To Beauxbatons, or so I heard. Word on the Gryffindor grapevine is that he needed some time away or something”.

 

Albus felt a wash of guilt flood his chest at the thought of having driven Scorpius so far away to get out of Albus’s skin. He wondered if Scorpius had made new friends there already, whether he was already getting to grips with the language or whether he had remained just as reclusive as he was at Hogwarts. Whatever was going on, he hoped the best for Scorpius with no strings attached at all; Albus wondered if this was the most liberated that he’d ever felt. 

 

“I hope he’s okay”, Albus mumbled softly. Spying his abandoned plate next to his feet with a hungry growl of his stomach, he poked Rose from her position on his arm. “Come on, hardly anyone’s here still - we can go get fresh breakfast”. 

 

Rose sniffed again with a smile as the pair got to their feet, Rose snatching the newspaper out of Albus’s arm playfully whilst Albus was too distracted by his bacon and sausage roll. Suddenly, Albus felt eleven again, as though he was back in the garden at Grimmauld Place before they moved to Godric’s Hollow. Albus was chasing Rose, who had taken his toy wand, across the luscious green grass of the summer before his first year at Hogwarts. His view was rosy, clouded by an infatuating nostalgia that made his heart collapse in the simplicity of his childhood memories. Something had clicked back in place all of a sudden. Things were a little more right with the world that day. 

 

***

 

_16th September 2023_

_Hogwarts, Highlands_

 

_Scorp,_

 

_I know you’re at Beauxbatons. I wish you’d let us know where you were, mate! I was really worried about you when you weren’t in the Great Hall on feast night and even more when you hadn’t turned up to lessons. Maybe I don’t have a right to know these things anymore, but as your friend, I just want you to know I was thinking about you._

 

_I know that what happened after the kiss was shitty. I wasn’t thinking rationally and I know you must be hurting afterwards. I just didn’t expect that you were going to kiss me… I was gonna tell you that it couldn’t happen, that I wanted to get back with Scott but you didn’t give me a chance. I’m really sorry that it turned out the way it did._

 

_That doesn’t mean I don’t want to be your best friend still, though. Me and Rose talked about our differences and we’re alright again now. I know it’s sad that it took all the shit between us for me and Rose to be alright again but at least it’s happened. I’d really like us to get there as well but I’ll understand if you can’t do that now. No matter how much I love Scott and don’t want to leave him for the world, you matter a lot to me, too. I know this is pretty much exactly the same situation as it was when it was you and Rose together… so I won’t put pressure on you. I’d just like to talk to you._

 

_Fuck, this was a ramble. I hope you understood what I’m trying to say. Hope you’re enjoying France and learning a bit of the lingo. Hope it all goes well and that I hear from you soon!_

 

_Your dear friend,_

 

_Albus_

 

***

 

_20th September 2023_

_Beauxbatons, Pyrenees_

 

_Albus,_

 

_That’s fine. I need some space, so please don’t reply to this. See you when I get back in November, probably._

 

_Regards,_

 

_Scorpius_

 

***

 

Scott had taken to pacing an awful lot these days. Ever since he had sent off his application in November for next year’s Auror training internships, Albus had hardly ever seen him sat down for any longer than five seconds at a time. When Scott was obliged to take a seat in lessons, Albus would watch him entranced at the steady, nervous beat of his feet against the clacking floor; one Charms lesson, Professor Flitwick had charmed Scott’s laces together to keep his legs still for a change. 

 

November came and went in a whirlwind of falling leaves and glistening candles and Christmas wreaths. And still, Scott paced up and down the creaking floorboards of the classrooms and dormitories and the Room of Requirement for his and Albus’s more private meetings. It had been waking up next to Scott one chilly December morning in their own version of the Room of Requirement that weeks of expectant pacing hit their climax. 

 

Albus hit a hazy form of consciousness with the sound of the same refrain of squeaks and creaks from the floorboards as ever. Blinking out the crusted sleep still in his eyes, he heaved himself up from his slumbering position to see a blurred six-foot blob moving in an erratic circle around the moonlit room. 

 

Albus groaned with exhaustion. “Scott, mate, it’s the middle of the night, I swear. Get back into bed”. 

 

“It’s not”, Scott’s voice scratched anxiously through the half-light. “It’s twenty past six”. 

 

“Tomayto, tomato, Scott”, Albus fell back onto the pillows with a decisive thud that made the sheets bounce. “I can still have twenty more minutes before I need to be awake for the good bacon…”

 

“They said they would get back to us within two weeks, Al”, Scott ignored him entirely and the pace of his steps around the room grew with an increasing sense of worry. “It’s been four weeks, Al. _Four whole weeks_. It’s obvious I’ve not gotten in…”

 

“That’s what you said last night”, Albus rolled his eyes inside his eye sockets. “And the night before, and the night before, and the night before…”

 

“Just because you have your provisional place at the Royal Society of Magochemistry, Al…”

 

Albus winced at Scott’s words, still not entirely sure how he was supposed to react to the news. Somewhere wanted him. Somewhere _really prestigious_ and well respected wanted him. He was wanted by someone, above someone else. Despite feeling more loved by Scott than he had ever felt before, he still found it novel and a little frightening that someone put their faith in Albus Potter to do something so big. He hoped whoever it was knew what they had let themselves in for if he got the grades he needed…

 

“I know, I know”, he sighed, pushing himself back up with his fists and swinging round to put his bare feet on the wooden floor. He stood up and walked over to his boyfriend, arms swinging around Scott as he added, “I know you’re worried, mate. But they’ll get back to you when they get back to you. Don’t try and second-guess them”. 

 

“I guess”, Scott huffed, leaving the embrace as he found his slippers underneath the bed and slipped them on. “I just have this whole vision of the future mapped out and I’ve spent too much time looking forward to it… I was kinda hoping that we could get somewhere together if we’re both gonna be in London next year… make a real go of it, like…”

 

Albus caught back up with him, feeling his cheeks burn redder than the magically lit fireplace away from the bed. Taking Scott around the waist, he leant forwards to give him a quick kiss in bashful appreciation. Albus grinned amusedly when he noticed Scott tense up in surprise for a moment before relaxing back into the kiss, taking a hand to Albus’s backside. 

 

“Twenty minutes to get the good bacon, you say, Potter?” Albus’s heart twinged slightly at the veiled suggestion. 

 

“Twenty minutes”, Albus murmured with a small smirk. 

 

“Right, then”.

 

—-

 

 

Twenty minutes had turned into fifty, so reluctant were they to finally leave the confines of the Room of Requirement to the relative cold outside. The good bacon had gone, to be replaced by the perfectly adequate bacon that was piled high at the end of the Ravenclaw table where Matthew and the girls were tucking into the daily crossword. 

 

“Post come in yet?”, Scott murmured to Matthew as Albus walked straight past them to the clean plates at the bottom of the table. 

 

“Nope”, Matthew chewed on the top of his sugar-tipped quill, not looking up from the folded paper. “Who was that potioneer who discovered Armortentia, Al? Eight letters”.

 

“Philmoni?” Albus offered, preoccupied by bacon and Scott’s incessant huffing. “Come on, Scottie, get this down ya”.

 

“Very funny”, Scott bit back, sliding along the bench to where Albus had placed the fry-up. “Goddammit, it should be here by now”.

 

Albus rolled his eyes and took his own place in between Matthew and Scott. “Go on, gi’us another clue”.

 

Ellie took the paper from Matthew’s hand. “We’ve been stuck on - “

 

Squawks from the tinselled ceiling above silenced the rest of Ellie’s sentence as the morning’s post began to filter from the Owlery doors down to the half-awake students below. Albus could hear Scott’s leg shake against the table leg and turned to see his boyfriend almost glaring up above, waiting expectantly for something and nothing at the same time. 

 

Albus looked above too since he was expecting something. Of course, that something wasn’t something that he particularly wanted Scott to worry about, not when his boyfriend was too worried about his own future to worry about Albus too. Indeed, Albus had written to Scorpius again. November had come and gone and Scorpius had not returned. Albus almost worried himself at how he was thinking about it, how he was still worried about the effects of a decision he had made almost eight months previously. The choppiness of his emotional changes towards Scorpius over the years had made Albus dizzy; however, it was finally finding his own inner stability in his love for Scott that made him realise how important Scorpius had always been to him after all. 

 

Albus had written to Scorpius at the start of December when it was clear that he was not coming back when he said he was going to. It had been a short one, giving his friend as much space as he could whilst still showing that he cared about how he was doing. It had been a week since the owl and Albus had started to wonder whether Scorpius was coming back at all, whether he had made new friends and decided never to return to Britain. After the way things had ended between them, he wouldn’t have been surprised if Scorpius could never look Albus’s way again. And that made Albus sadder than he had ever thought he could be.

 

Four owls had swooped down in front of the group by the time Albus had returned from his own thoughts: his own tawny owl, Byron; Matthew’s white owl, Grace; Daphne’s barn owl, Autumn; and a very official-looking granite-coloured owl carrying a pristinely white envelope. Albus raised his eyebrows at the sound of Scott choking on air at the sight and he watched as his boyfriend put a shaking, tentative hand out to the letter that the owl had dropped before him. 

 

It was as Albus heard the sound of Scott’s envelope behind being ripped softly apart that he noticed the letter dropped to him by Byron. It was covered in last night’s rain and sleet and ice cold to the touch. The thin, wiry handwriting on the front made Albus scrunch up his lips in apprehension, expecting the worst. He thumbed the letter open at the back and unfolded the carefully placed letter in his hands. 

 

_4th December 2023_

_Beauxbatons, Pyrenees_

 

_Dear Albus,_

 

_I know I said I’d be back in November, but Father is joining me out here for a few months. Looks like I’ll be staying here until after Christmas, maybe longer. I also said not to reply to my last letter, which you ignored, so I’m asking you again - do not reply to this letter. I am fine._

 

_Sincerely,_

 

_Scorpius_

 

Albus drowned out the sudden jubilant cheers that surrounded him, instead allowing a pit of longing to open just a crack through his chest. Albus ached. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There we are - not the tidiest, cliché-less chapter ever, but I just wanted you guys to see what happened. Let's hope Scorpius and Albus finally get the friendship those two deserve! Thanks everyone who read this, please leave your comments as I'd love to know what you guys thought! 
> 
> And, for the record, it was always going to be Scott. ;)


	9. Author's Note

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In response to today

Hey guys :) 

When I posted the last chapter, I was expecting at least some disappointment from how I chose to bring the story to a climax; what I was not expecting was a full-scale uprising. It's definitely refreshing to hear some criticism though; I feel like often I post things and they don't really receive criticism at all and that makes me wonder if everything I'm doing is right and what sort of things I should be improving on when I don't get picked up on it. It's lovely to receive all your kind messages when it has gone well, of course, and I'm always happy to receive compliments on my work. But I'm noticing you guys' reaction to this went beyond what my choice for Albus was. 

This story never set out to be easy for Scorbus at all and I had always meant for it to be Scott at the end, mostly because I didn't want Albus to lose the progression that he had had to make since Scorpius and Rose started. For those who believe I've gone too OOC sometimes, then you know the characters better than I do - I said at the beginning that I hadn't read the book or watched the play, so I was going off what I had learnt from other people's fics. What I was consciously trying to avoid was making it too simple. I didn't want things to be particularly easy between them, I needed them to be kept apart in order to let them grow without each other for a while. I wanted to put them in different situations with different people and see how their feelings would play out. ?

But I recognise that some of the criticism is justified. I've always worried that Scott was a bit 2D, and the last thing I wanted to do was make you guys actively dislike the characters you're not supposed to hate. I personally believe that I can make them like able with the plot I have/had in mind but obviously I've not executed this one well. My life got very very busy after the last post and therefore I decided that instead of keeping you waiting, I'd quickly edit what I had and put it out there. I realise now that that was toooooootally the wrong thing to do. As much as I think that my plot can be justified and that I stand by my plot decisions, I'm upset that people found the last update(s) disappointing, and when enough people are telling me that I've fucked up, I tend to trust you guys' judgement. 

When I am able, I'm going to sit down and give this chapter (and maybe bits of the whole story) a good edit and declutter to tidy it up. For those who are disappointed that I didn't choose Scorpius, I'm afraid you're going to be disappointed either way. But for the people who are still interested in the story in spite of my decision, I hope you'll come back once I've re-edited it and enjoy it again. I feel as though I've let down a story that people enjoyed before this update, and I don't like the feeling that I've ruined a good thing. 

Any and all comments from you guys are extremely welcome - if you have advice on things that I could do better, then I'd really really like to hear it. I stand by my story, but any tips on how to improve it to make you enjoy it too are more than appreciated. Thanks for all of your support and your honesty all the way through - it's through experiences like today that will make me a better writing in the long term.

Love,

> Ermmmmmm

 


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